kovidgoyal/kitty · warning

Invalid quality specification: {quality}

Error message

Invalid quality specification: {quality}

What it means

The first argument to resize_window is not a recognized resize quality; kitty substitutes 'wider'.

Source

Thrown at kitty/options/utils.py:303

def neighboring_window(func: str, rest: str) -> FuncArgsType:
    rest = rest.lower()
    rest = {'up': 'top', 'down': 'bottom'}.get(rest, rest)
    if rest not in ('left', 'right', 'top', 'bottom'):
        log_error(f'Invalid neighbor specification: {rest}')
        rest = 'right'
    return func, [rest]


@func_with_args('resize_window')
def resize_window(func: str, rest: str) -> FuncArgsType:
    vals = rest.strip().split(maxsplit=1)
    if len(vals) > 2:
        log_error('resize_window needs one or two arguments, using defaults')
        args = ['wider', 1]
    else:
        quality = vals[0].lower()
        if quality not in ('reset', 'taller', 'shorter', 'wider', 'narrower'):
            log_error(f'Invalid quality specification: {quality}')
            quality = 'wider'
        increment = 1
        if len(vals) == 2:
            try:
                increment = int(vals[1])
            except Exception:
                log_error(f'Invalid increment specification: {vals[1]}')
        args = [quality, increment]
    return func, args


@func_with_args('move_window')
def move_window(func: str, rest: str) -> FuncArgsType:
    rest = rest.lower()
    rest = {'up': 'top', 'down': 'bottom'}.get(rest, rest)
    prest: int | str = rest
    try:
        prest = int(prest)

View on GitHub (pinned to 6d5d0c4406)

Solutions

1. Use one of: reset, taller, shorter, wider, narrower
2. Check spelling and case (the value is lowercased, so case is forgiving)

Example fix

# before
map f1 resize_window bigger 3
# after
map f1 resize_window wider 3

q = 'taller'
ok = q in ('reset','taller','shorter','wider','narrower')

When it happens

Trigger: `map f1 resize_window bigger 3` — 'bigger' not in ('reset','taller','shorter','wider','narrower').

Common situations: Guessing intuitive names like 'grow'/'shrink'/'bigger' instead of kitty's fixed set.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Invalid value" and "allowed values are" config errors: what your library rejected and how to fix it — this error's family across 41 libraries.

Related errors

• resize_window needs one or two arguments, using defaults
• Invalid increment specification: {vals[1]}
• Unknown signal: {rest} ignoring
• Invalid change_font_size specification: {rest}, treating it
• clear_terminal needs two arguments, using defaults

AI-assisted analysis of kovidgoyal/kitty@6d5d0c4406 (2026-08-27). Data as JSON: /api/errors/9d66a55537892598. Report an issue: GitHub.