Kitty 0.48 adds vertical tabs, improved graphics protocol, better peformance, and more

Kitty 0.48 brings several significant updates to this GPU-based terminal emulator. Notably, it now offers vertical tab support along the left or right window edge, catering to users with wide aspect ratio screens. The graphics protocol receives a new transient usage hint for images, allowing client applications to specify when images are intended for brief display.

Following these UI improvements, input handling changes mean clicking inside an unfocused Kitty window now both focuses the window and sends the click event to the target element. This aligns Linux behavior with the macOS default, streamlining multi-window interactions.

Advanced users benefit from enhancements to the remote-control get-text kitten, which can now retrieve text from the alternate screen buffer and its scrollback history. Wayland users see fixes for initial window sizing with fractional display scaling and resolution of tab creation issues on GNOME environments.

For macOS, two new options provide greater control over OS window layering and allow panels to cover the global dock. The build process now uses Ubuntu 22, and Kitty can launch files in Sublime Text or Zed at specific line numbers for editing. Memory handling improvements reduce false positives for memory leaks, and cursor trails are now less resource-intensive by pausing their shader while hidden. Cursor positioning for graphics using cell offsets has also been fixed, as well as additional improvements and bug fixes.