Here my work around to Kitty support

Using Cmd+C to Copy Both Mouse and Keyboard Selections in Ghostty

Problem

On macOS, Cmd+C only copies text selected with the mouse. Text selected using keyboard shortcuts in the shell (e.g., Shift+Option+Left/Right for word selection in zsh) is not copied to the clipboard when pressing Cmd+C.

This happens because:

Keyboard selection in the shell (via readline/ZLE) is managed by the shell, not the terminal
Ghostty cannot see the shell's internal selection state
In legacy terminal encoding, the super (Cmd) modifier is not sent to the shell

Solution

Enable the Kitty keyboard protocol in zsh and use Ghostty's performable: keybind prefix.

1. Ghostty Configuration

Add to your Ghostty config (~/Library/Application Support/com.mitchellh.ghostty/config.ghostty):

# Required for Option+Arrow word movement
macos-option-as-alt = true

# Cmd+C: copy terminal selection if present, otherwise pass to shell
keybind = performable:super+c=copy_to_clipboard

The performable: prefix means:

If there's a terminal/mouse selection → copy it to clipboard (key consumed)
If there's no terminal selection → pass the key through to the shell

2. Zsh Configuration

Create or add to a zsh config file (e.g., ~/.zsh/ghostty-text-selection.zsh):

# Enable Kitty keyboard protocol (allows Cmd+C to be sent to zsh)
printf '\e[>1u'

# Restore default keyboard mode on shell exit
zshexit() {
    printf '\e[<u'
}

# Copy ZLE selection to clipboard when Cmd+C is pressed
# ^[[99;9u = CSI u encoding for super+c (99='c', 9=super modifier)
zle-copy-selection-to-clipboard() {
    if (( REGION_ACTIVE )); then
        zle copy-region-as-kill
        printf '%s' "$CUTBUFFER" | pbcopy
        zle deactivate-region
        zle -M "Copied to clipboard"
    fi
}
zle -N zle-copy-selection-to-clipboard
bindkey '^[[99;9u' zle-copy-selection-to-clipboard

Source this file from your .zshrc or .zprofile:

source ~/.zsh/ghostty-text-selection.zsh

3. Optional: Keyboard Selection Support

To enable keyboard-based text selection (like Shift+Option+Arrow for word selection), install the zsh-shift-select plugin:

git clone https://github.com/jirutka/zsh-shift-select ~/.zsh/plugins/zsh-shift-select

Then source it in your zsh config:

source ~/.zsh/plugins/zsh-shift-select/zsh-shift-select.plugin.zsh
bindkey -e  # Ensure emacs keymap

How It Works

printf '\e[>1u' enables Kitty keyboard protocol flag 1 (disambiguate), which makes Ghostty encode Cmd+C as the CSI u sequence ^[[99;9u instead of dropping it
performable:super+c=copy_to_clipboard copies terminal selection when present, otherwise passes the key to zsh
Zsh receives ^[[99;9u and the custom widget copies the ZLE selection to the system clipboard

Result

Mouse selection + Cmd+C → copies to clipboard (handled by Ghostty)
Keyboard selection + Cmd+C → copies to clipboard (handled by zsh)

Both work seamlessly with the same shortcut.

Implement the Kitty Clipboard Protocol (OSC 5522) #10549

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