changelog: https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/changelog/#detailed-list-of-changes

0.40.0 [2025-03-08]

• Allow terminal programs to use text in different font sizes (#8226)
• When rendering underlines add gaps around text descenders (parts of the text that overlap with the underline). Controlled by the new option underline_exclusion (#8226)
• Finally fix the issue of text-width mismatches that has been plaguing the terminal ecosystem for decades by allowing terminal programs to specify how many cells to render a piece of text in (#8226)
• Behavior change: The notify_on_cmd_finish option now uses OS Window visibility instead of focus state when set to invisible on platforms that support querying OS window visibility (#8320)
• launch: Add options launch --source-window and launch --next-to to allow specifying which window is used as the data source and destination location independently of the currently active window (#8295)
• Linux: Add support for COLRv1 fonts. These are typically emoji fonts that use vector images for emoji
• Add support for the octant box-drawing characters
• Speed up rendering of box drawing characters by moving the implementation to native code
• When confirming if a window should be closed consider it active if it has running background processes (#8358)
• Remote control: kitten @ scroll-window: Allow scrolling to previous/next prompt
• macOS: Fix fallback font rendering for bold/italic text not working for some symbols that are present in the Menlo regular face but not the bold/italic faces (#8282)
• XTGETTCAP: Fix response invalid for empty string capabilities (#8304)
• ssh kitten: Fix incorrect copying of data files when using the python interpreter and also fix incorrect hard link detection (#8308)
• Fix a regression in the previous release that broke setting of nullable colors
• Fix a regression in 0.39.0 that caused a crash on invalid Unicode with a large number of combining characters in a single cell (#8318)
• Fix --hold always restoring cursor to block shape instead of respecting the value of cursor_shape (#8344)
• When dragging in rectangle select mode use a crosshair mouse cursor configurable via pointer_shape_when_dragging
• macOS: notify kitten: Fix waiting for result from desktop notification not working (#8379)
• Wayland: Fix mouse pointer position update not being sent when focus regained (#8397, #8398)
• Fix cursor blink animation when background_opacity is less than one (#8401)
• Wayland: panel kitten: Add a center mode for creating panels to ease creation of centered popups in Wayland (#8411)