Warp: Full Kitty Keyboard Protocol Support

A Long-Requested Terminal Standard Finally Arrives in Warp

The February 4, 2026 Warp release delivered full support for the Kitty keyboard enhancement protocol — a terminal input standard that has been widely adopted across the terminal emulator ecosystem and has been among the most-requested features in Warp's GitHub issues for years.

The Kitty keyboard protocol, originally created by the Kitty terminal emulator project, is a backward-compatible extension to the traditional terminal keyboard input model. Applications can opt in to the enhanced mode, at which point the terminal can report a far richer set of keyboard events — including modifier key combinations that standard protocols cannot distinguish.

Why the Standard Matters

Traditional terminals have severe limitations in how they encode keyboard input. Many modifier combinations that are perfectly valid — Ctrl+Enter, Alt+Arrow, Ctrl+Shift+Meta+Arrow — simply cannot be distinguished from other keypresses in legacy terminal protocols. This forces TUI application developers to work around these limitations or avoid modifier-heavy keybindings entirely.

The Kitty protocol solves this by defining an unambiguous encoding for all key events, supporting six modifier keys — Shift, Alt, Ctrl, Super, Hyper, Meta — plus Num Lock and Caps Lock. Applications that implement the protocol can use the full keyboard as intended by their designers.

Prior to this release, users running TUI applications like OpenCode inside Warp would find that keyboard shortcuts using modifier combinations simply failed to register, even though the same shortcuts worked correctly in Kitty, WezTerm, and other terminals that had already adopted the protocol. This created a meaningful compatibility gap for Warp users who rely on advanced TUI tools in their workflow.

Impact for TUI Developers and Users

With full Kitty protocol support now in place, Warp becomes a compatible host for any TUI application that has adopted the enhanced keyboard input standard. Developers building TUI apps no longer need to test around Warp's limitations, and Warp users gain access to the full feature sets of protocol-compatible tools without switching terminals.