spice-kitten

SPICE client that renders remote VM output using the Kitty Graphics Protocol.

Instead of opening a conventional graphical window, spice-kitten converts SPICE display bitmaps into PNG images and displays them inline in your terminal — no GTK, SDL, or VTE required.

Features

• In-terminal display — renders VM output via Kitty graphics escape sequences
• X11 input backend — grab keyboard/pointer and forward events to the SPICE server
• Threaded SPICE channels — separate threads for Main, Display, and Screen rendering
• Mouse coordinate scaling — maps terminal dimensions to VM display automatically
• RSA-OAEP ticket encryption — secure SPICE authentication
• Shared-memory rendering — PNG data written to POSIX shm for zero-copy terminal display

Requirements

Dependency	Purpose
spice-protocol	SPICE protocol definitions
libX11	X11 input backend
openssl / libcrypto	RSA password encryption
libpng	PNG encoding
xkbcommon	XKB keyboard mapping on Wayland (optional)

A terminal emulator with Kitty Graphics Protocol support is required for display (e.g. kitty, konsole, wezterm, ghostty).

Building

CMake

cmake -S. -B build -G Ninja
cmake --build build

Install:

cmake --install build

Usage

spice-kitten -a <addr> -p <port> -v -m -c -h

  -a <addr>  IPv4 address (default: 127.0.0.1)
  -p <port>  SPICE port  (default: 5900)
  -v         Enable logging to /tmp/spice_client.log
  -m         Hide mouse cursor
  -c         Do not clear screen (use ANSI escape instead)
  -h         Print help

Quit: Alt+Q

QEMU configuration

spice-kitten works best with -vga virtio. The -vga qxl driver uses SPICE_CLIP_TYPE_RECTS, which is not supported — artefacts or missing regions may appear.

Example:

qemu-system-x86_64 \
  -vga virtio \
  -spice port=5900,disable-ticketing=on \
  ...

Project structure

spice_kitten.c            Main application (X11 input backend)
libspice/                 SPICE client library (static)
  include/libspice.h      Public API
  sp_proto.c              Protocol: channel init, main/display/input loops
  sp_screen.c             Screen: BMP→PNG→shm→Kitty output
  sp_utils.c              Utilities: init, connect, password, scaling
pkg/gentoo/               Gentoo ebuild

License

BSD 2-Clause © 2026 nEMU