The future is (still) now

The premier UX of the 21st century just got a little better: With chafa , you can now view very, very reasonable approximations of pictures and animations in the comfort of your favorite terminal emulator. The power of ANSI X3.64 compels you!

Example

You can get fair results by using only U+2580 (upper half block). Pixterm, catimg and a few other terminal graphics printers do this, and so can Chafa with chafa --symbols vhalf . However, Chafa uses more symbols by default, greatly improving quality.

Input U+2580 only (pixterm, catimg) Chafa default

There are more examples in the gallery!

Features

Supports most popular image formats, including animated GIFs.

Combines Unicode symbols from multiple selectable ranges for optimal output.

Multiple color modes, including Truecolor, 256-color, 16-color and simple FG/BG.

RGB and DIN99d color spaces for improved color picking.

Alpha transparency support in any color mode, including in animations.

Suitable for terminal graphics, ANSI art composition and even black & white print.

Works with most modern and classic terminals and terminal emulators.

Documented, stable C API.

Fast & lean.

Documentation

Chafa will print a help text if run without arguments, or with chafa --help . It also comes with a man page displayable with man chafa .

The gallery contains examples of how command-line options can be used to tweak the output.