Forcing kitty graphics support on or off ---------------------------------------- IPython decides whether the terminal understands the `kitty graphics protocol `__ by walking up the process tree looking for a known terminal emulator. That guess can be wrong -- for instance inside ``tmux``, a container, or an emulator not on the list -- and it is not free: it imports ``psutil`` and inspects the process tree on every startup that has a tty. The ``IPYTHON_KITTY_GRAPHICS`` environment variable now states the answer outright and skips the detection entirely:: IPYTHON_KITTY_GRAPHICS=1 ipython # my terminal does support it IPYTHON_KITTY_GRAPHICS=0 ipython # it does not; do not even look Accepted values are ``1``/``true`` and ``0``/``false``, case-insensitive. Leaving it unset, or setting it to the empty string, keeps the existing autodetection. Any other value is ignored with a warning, so a typo cannot silently turn graphics off.