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  1. Docs
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  4. Settings

In-session settings


Run /settings to change how Kiro looks and behaves — colors, keyboard shortcuts, multi-line input, and accessibility toggles — without leaving your chat session.

Subcommands

/settings theme

Customize the colors used for prompt input and agent response text. Opens a live preview so you can see changes before committing them.

bash
/settings theme

The theme system uses named ANSI colors, so your customizations render correctly across terminals with different color palettes. Falls back to safe ANSI colors when terminal color detection has low confidence.

/settings keybindings

View the current keyboard shortcut configuration. This is a read-only reference showing all configurable bindings and their current values.

bash
/settings keybindings

To change keybindings, use the kiro-cli settings command:

bash
kiro-cli settings chat.keybindings.cancelStream "ctrl+x" kiro-cli settings chat.keybindings.closeMenu "ctrl+[" kiro-cli settings chat.keybindings.quit "ctrl+shift+q"

See Key bindings (terminal UI) for the full reference.

/settings terminal

Enable Shift+Enter and Option+Enter as newline shortcuts in your terminal. If pressing Shift+Enter currently submits your prompt instead of inserting a newline, this command fixes it by auto-detecting your terminal and applying the appropriate key binding configuration.

bash
/settings terminal

Terminals that need configuration (auto-applied by /settings terminal):

  • VS Code integrated terminal
  • Alacritty
  • Zed
  • Apple Terminal

Terminals with native support (no configuration needed):

  • iTerm2
  • Kitty
  • Ghostty
  • WezTerm
  • Warp

For terminals that don't support automatic configuration, Kiro shows manual workaround instructions.

Info

A .bak backup is created before any terminal configuration file is modified. If something goes wrong, you can restore from the backup.

tmux users: Add both lines to your tmux.conf for Shift+Enter to pass through correctly:

bash
set -s extended-keys on set -as terminal-features 'xterm*:extkeys'

/settings display

Toggle visual features for accessibility or personal preference.

bash
/settings display

Available toggles:

  • Animations — enable or disable streaming animations and spinners
  • ASCII art — toggle decorative ASCII art in greetings and panels
  • Icons — switch between icon and text-only indicators

Persistence

All changes made through /settings are saved to ~/.kiro/settings/cli.json and apply to future sessions. You can also edit this file directly with kiro-cli settings open.

Related

  • Settings reference — full list of all CLI settings
  • Terminal UI — terminal UI features and configuration
  • Configuration — configuration file paths and scopes
Page updated: May 19, 2026
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