---
name: "kate"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "kate"
version: "26.08.2-1"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/kate"
---

# kate(1)

Advanced text editor by KDE

## NAME

kate - Advanced text editor by KDE

## SYNOPSIS

**kate** \[**-s, --start** *name*\] \[**--startanon**\] \[**-n, --new**\] \[**-b, --block**\] \[**-p, --pid** *pid*\] \[**-e, --encoding** *name*\] \[**-l, --line** *line*\] \[**-c, --column** *column*\] \[**-i, --stdin**\] \[**--tempfile**\] \[*file*\]

## DESCRIPTION

Kate is the KDE Advanced Text Editor.

Kate also provides the editor part for various applications, under the name KWrite.

Some of Kate's many features include configurable syntax highlighting for languages ranging from C and C++ to HTML to bash scripts, the ability to create and maintain projects, a multiple document interface (MDI), and a self-contained terminal emulator.

But Kate is more than a programmer's editor. Its ability to open several files at once makes it ideal for editing UNIX®'s many configuration files. This document was written in Kate.

## OPTIONS

- **-s**, **--start** *name*

  Start Kate with a given session.

- **--startanon**

  Start Kate with a new anonymous session, implies **-n**.

- **-n**, **--new**

  Force start of a new Kate instance (is ignored if **start** is used and another Kate instance already has the given session opened), forced if no parameters and no URLs are given at all.

- **-b**, **--block**

  If using an already running Kate instance, block until it exits, if URLs given to open.

- **-p, --pid** *pid*

  Only try to reuse kate instance with this *pid* (is ignored if **start** is used and another Kate instance already has the given session opened).

- **-e, --encoding** *name*

  Set encoding for the file to open.

  You can use this to force a file opened in utf-8 format, for instance. (The command **iconv -l** provides a list of encodings, which may be helpful to you.)

- **-l, --line** *line*

  Navigate to this line.

- **-c, --column** *column*

  Navigate to this column.

- **-i, --stdin**

  Read the contents of stdin.

- **--tempfile**

  The files/URLs opened by the application will be deleted after use.

*file*

File to open.

## SEE ALSO

More detailed user documentation is available from **help:/kate** (either enter this URL into Konqueror, or run **khelpcenter** *help:/kate*).

[kf6options(7)](/kf6options/7.md)

[qt6options(7)](/qt6options/7.md)

There is also further information available at the **Kate website**\[1\].

## EXAMPLES

To open a file named source.cpp at column 15, line 25, in an existing Kate window, you could use:

```
kate -c 15 -l 25 source.cpp
```

If you have an active internet connection, you can take advantage of KDE's network transparency to open a file from an FTP site. If you do not have write permission on the remote server, the file will be opened read only and you will be prompted for a local filename to save to if you make changes. If you do have write permission, changes will be saved transparently over the network.

```
kate ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/README
```

## AUTHORS

The maintainer of Kate is Christoph Cullmann \<cullmann@kde.org\>. A comprehensive list of authors and contributors is available in the complete user manual mentioned above.

## AUTHOR

**Lauri Watts** \<lauri@kde.org\>

Author.

## NOTES

- 1\.

  Kate website

  https://kate-editor.org/