Kitty Terminal Hotkey Drop-Down/Overlay Hotkey (similar to iTerm2 hotkey window)

Question

TDLR

How to get something similar to the iTerm "dropdown hotkey/overlay" functionality to work with Kitty Terminal (on a Mac)?

---

I work on a Mac and used iTerm2 for a long time and integrated the "hotkey window" into my workflow. Since I've made the switch to Kitty I have been trying to get the same functionality but couldn't find something that suits my needs.

Caveat/Problems

The one app that has this built-in, that I know of, is also iTerm. There's one big difference with this implementation and the native iTerm implementation.

iTerm is more of a "drop-down", in that it functions as an overlay. The BTT implementation will literally show and hide the application. This means that whenever you are working with multiple desktops, and you trigger this shortcut, BTT will move you to the desktop where the application is.

A similar solution for Lunix is using tdrop. As far as I know there's no equivalent tool for MacOS

I find this quite annoying TBH and would love to know if anyone knows how to do the same thing, but in a "drop-down" or "overlay" fashion

What I've tried

BetterTouchTool (BTT)

This is the way I've set it up using BTT.

AppleScript

This does sort of the same thing, but without the use of BTT.

set appName to "kitty"

tell application "System Events"
    if visible of application process appName is true then
        set visible of application process appName to false
    else
        set visible of application process appName to true
    end if
end tell

Answer 1

I just got the same concern and implemented with the help of Hammerspoon app.

1. Firstly, we need tweak Kitty config in ~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf:

# hide title and corners on Mac OS X
hide_window_decorations titlebar-and-corners
# make kitty app quit instead of empty window, which made the script hard to detect kitty status
macos_quit_when_last_window_closed yes
# this one is optional, this would save the script to move the terminal window to top if manually set
remember_window_size  yes

2. Secondly, copy below init.lua to ~/.hammerspoon:

local spaces = require("hs.spaces") -- https://github.com/asmagill/hs._asm.spaces

-- Switch kitty
hs.hotkey.bind({'command'}, 'escape', function ()  -- hotkey config
  local BUNDLE_ID = 'net.kovidgoyal.kitty' -- more accurate to avoid mismatching on browser titles

  function getMainWindow(app)
    -- get main window from app
    local win = nil
    while win == nil do
      win = app:mainWindow()
    end
    return win
  end

  function moveWindow(kitty, space, mainScreen)
    -- move to main space
    local win = getMainWindow(kitty)
    if win:isFullScreen() then
      hs.eventtap.keyStroke('fn', 'f', 0, kitty)
    end
    winFrame = win:frame()
    scrFrame = mainScreen:fullFrame()
    winFrame.w = scrFrame.w
    winFrame.y = scrFrame.y
    winFrame.x = scrFrame.x
    win:setFrame(winFrame, 0)
    spaces.moveWindowToSpace(win, space)
    if win:isFullScreen() then
      hs.eventtap.keyStroke('fn', 'f', 0, kitty)
    end
    win:focus()
  end

  local kitty = hs.application.get(BUNDLE_ID)
  if kitty ~= nil and kitty:isFrontmost() then
    kitty:hide()
  else
    local space = spaces.activeSpaceOnScreen()
    local mainScreen = hs.screen.mainScreen()
    if kitty == nil and hs.application.launchOrFocusByBundleID(BUNDLE_ID) then
      local appWatcher = nil
      appWatcher = hs.application.watcher.new(function(name, event, app)
        if event == hs.application.watcher.launched and app:bundleID() == BUNDLE_ID then
          getMainWindow(app):move(hs.geometry({x=0,y=0,w=1,h=0.4}))
          app:hide()
          moveWindow(app, space, mainScreen)
          appWatcher:stop()
        end
      end)
      appWatcher:start()
    end
    if kitty ~= nil then
      moveWindow(kitty, space, mainScreen)
    end
  end
end)

Reload config in Hammerspoon, now you could invoke/launch Kitty with hotkey cmd+esc