Using exactly one OS Window and forcing new kitty commands to open a new tab?

[dcraig327]

How could I allow only a single kitty window and executing this:

1. kitty --detach would focus on the existing kitty window.
2. kitty --detach newtab would focus as above plus append a new tab.

Use case is to simplify Super+T in Gnome, providing a single window as I haven't a need for multiple tty os windows. I've searched in the existing closed issues, in the discussions, on the web, the documentation, and tried kitty-control all with no luck. I maybe searching for the wrong thing, this sounds like a question that would've been asked before.

Unclear if kitty can do 1. or 2. above. kitty --single-instance does use the existing PID, but it creates a new window. No luck with sessions.

[kovidgoyal]

https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/remote-control/

[dcraig327]

thx. wasn't initially clear.

this is the script to accomplish the requirements
saved in a script bound to a hotkey set in the linux distro should work, for those with bash of course. i imagine modifying this script for other operating systems wouldn't be too difficult.

i have seen asked a few times when researching how to do this, people wanting a single hotkey to open kitty. mostly it involves a new instance. understandable that can't be supported in kitty as global hotkeys are an os feature.

there's a similar question asked in #392 -- however I wanted todo everything using kitty and kitty alone and i'm prone to moving my terminal all around the place. which reminds me, i could set this up as a systemd user service, minimized at launch, which prevents sending all errors to /dev/null below.

anyway thx. i believe you understand the use case by now. hope this helps someone else.

#!/bin/bash

#focus existing kitty os window or create & focus if n/a
good_kitty () {
  kitten @ focus-window --to unix:/tmp/mykitty &> /dev/null
  if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
    kitty --detach --directory="~" -o allow_remote_control=yes --listen-on unix:/tmp/mykitty
  fi
  kitten @ focus-window --to unix:/tmp/mykitty &> /dev/null
}

#focus new kitty tab in existing kitty os window
hello_kitty () {
  kitten @ launch --type=tab --to unix:/tmp/mykitty &> /dev/null
  if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
    kitten @ focus-window --to unix:/tmp/mykitty &> /dev/null
  else
    good_kitty
  fi
}

hello_kitty