Chafa: Terminal Graphics for the 21st Century

I learned about Chafa when I found a video editor that runs in the command line with keyboard control - vic - it just lets you insert split markers and when you exit the video is sliced up into the portions. I really like the low-fi nature of scrobbling through the video, it has low brain overhead.

https://github.com/wong-justin/vic

I use chafa extensively, and it really is the best tool for terminal graphics in my opinion.

I use it as a fallback option for terminals without proper terminal graphics support in my TUI Jupyter client, euporie.

There are Python bindings available: https://github.com/GuardKenzie/chafa.py

Why can't we have proper graphics on terminal? years ago I remember being able to use graphics.h to draw on MS-DOS terminal and print letters on it (text mode).

I'm currently using this for a teams/zoom/meet replacement for people who work in the terminal. Might even make it to a Show HN some day.

I use chafa in term.everything[0], and I have nothing but good things to say about it! hpjansson is a great maintainer too, if anything even seems like it's wrong with chafa he will chime in with a fix or a suggestion[1] (I'm not the only one he does this with too [2][3]). I would definitely recommend this lib for anyone doing terminal graphics.

[0]https://github.com/mmulet/term.everything

[1]https://github.com/mmulet/term.everything/issues/5

[2]https://lobste.rs/s/qh6lil/chafa_terminal_graphics_for_21st_...

[3]https://github.com/wong-justin/vic/issues/1#issue-2586904982

Discovered this recently when I wanted to set my perfect retro feeling company logo onto the MOTD of some hardware so we'd have it on the serial port.

I've been trying for like three hours to get this to show in-line images with w3m. Anyone got a config with that working?

qué chafa!! all jokes aside, this provides infinite posibilities for my obsession with text-based apps/CLI.

Previously in 2022 (97 points, 31 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32797681

If you want some hilarious insanity: t try explaining ascii/terminal rendering to a text llm and see how it struggles

I threw together a utility for this with just the half character in 2018, I don't even remember why.

https://rubygems.org/gems/barf

The name does imply the image quality, fyi.

My solution is also multithreaded, in Ruby. :D

https://github.com/wong-justin/vic

Wow. Thanks for this recommendation! I have multiple times half-baked something like this using ffmpeg to dump out thumbnails and make cuts.

[0]https://github.com/mmulet/term.everything

[1]https://github.com/mmulet/term.everything/issues/5

[2]https://lobste.rs/s/qh6lil/chafa_terminal_graphics_for_21st_...

[3]https://github.com/wong-justin/vic/issues/1#issue-2586904982

Discovered this recently when I wanted to set my perfect retro feeling company logo onto the MOTD of some hardware so we'd have it on the serial port.

Why can't we have proper graphics on terminal? years ago I remember being able to use graphics.h to draw on MS-DOS terminal and print letters on it (text mode).

Most popular terminals now have support for `kitty` graphics protocol which can smoothly and efficiently render raster images. So chafa is a way to get some backwards compatibility for some types of applications that want to show images but may not support that.

Did you try notcurses ? [0]

[0] https://notcurses.com/

There are multiple graphics mechanisms on terminals (both real, and the virtual ones that have replaced them), the issue is which ones your terminal supports (probably none, given most terminal/libraries are bad at supporting features that have been around since the 80s), and which libraries you are using to draw them.

I've been trying for like three hours to get this to show in-line images with w3m. Anyone got a config with that working?

I use chafa extensively, and it really is the best tool for terminal graphics in my opinion.

I use it as a fallback option for terminals without proper terminal graphics support in my TUI Jupyter client, euporie.

There are Python bindings available: https://github.com/GuardKenzie/chafa.py

I'm currently using this for a teams/zoom/meet replacement for people who work in the terminal. Might even make it to a Show HN some day.

qué chafa!! all jokes aside, this provides infinite posibilities for my obsession with text-based apps/CLI.

If you want some hilarious insanity: t try explaining ascii/terminal rendering to a text llm and see how it struggles

Previously in 2022 (97 points, 31 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32797681

I threw together a utility for this with just the half character in 2018, I don't even remember why.

https://rubygems.org/gems/barf

The name does imply the image quality, fyi.

My solution is also multithreaded, in Ruby. :D

w3m doesn't support chafa for inline image display.

(You can set a custom w3mimgdisplay command, but it has to speak the same protocol as w3mimgdisplay. If you're feeling adventurous, you can try modifying https://github.com/uobikiemukot/sdump/tree/master/yaimg-sixe....)

And JS bindings: https://github.com/hectorm/chafa-wasm

And I'm half-working on Rust bindings...

Have you tried Charmbracelet's bubble tea - https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea

> and it really is the best tool for terminal graphics in my opinion

Not sixel or kitty graphics?

i'm curious do you work entirely with a terminal and no desktop?

Chafa looks cool, i'd feel cool using it when i use a terminal but if really wanted to see an image id just open it in a image viewer.

This sounds amazing. I hope it does!

For HNers, 'chafa' in Argentinian/Chilean Spanish (and a few more) means tacky, crude, ripoff, low quality.

Did you try notcurses ? [0]

[0] https://notcurses.com/

notcurses is probably the best option for getting the best you can out of a random terminal (see https://github.com/dankamongmen/notcurses/blob/master/TERMIN... which details the status of most terminals people use), but the main thing is to choose a decent terminal that meets your needs. I personally use xterm (after using various other terminals, both "modern" and VTE-based), as I'm on Linux, and I need to connect to various devices (e.g. networking gear) where I need a reliable terminal that handles whatever those devices throw at it. The graphical mechanisms that work for me therefore are sixel and tektronic.

Running the included notcurses-demo on any half-modern terminal is really impressive:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4lmMADP1lA

Does any of those graphics mechanisms work over ssh?

w3m doesn't support chafa for inline image display.

And JS bindings: https://github.com/hectorm/chafa-wasm

And I'm half-working on Rust bindings...

Author of the JS bindings here. I also have a browser demo: https://ansi-o-matic.molinero.dev

> and it really is the best tool for terminal graphics in my opinion

Not sixel or kitty graphics?

One of the really cool things about chafa is that it has both sixel and kitty graphic renderers! (and iterm2 images as well) So you can output kitty if the terminal supports it, but fall back to ascii if it doesn’t.

What interests me about it is the unicode mosaic output format that looks higher quality than the usual upper half block or braille character approaches without needing to support a special protocol.

Setting aside the usual compatibility issues with those things.. neither are available from your buildbot. Also while Jupyter does supports images other notebooking ecosystems may not, and anyway you need a file whereas chafa can work with streams.

i'm curious do you work entirely with a terminal and no desktop?

Chafa looks cool, i'd feel cool using it when i use a terminal but if really wanted to see an image id just open it in a image viewer.

This sounds amazing. I hope it does!

For HNers, 'chafa' in Argentinian/Chilean Spanish (and a few more) means tacky, crude, ripoff, low quality.

Have you tried Charmbracelet's bubble tea - https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea

Running the included notcurses-demo on any half-modern terminal is really impressive:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4lmMADP1lA

BubbleTea is great, but it doesn't have support for Kitty Graphics. https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea/issues/163

Does any of those graphics mechanisms work over ssh?

Yes, any of the inline ones should work.

Author of the JS bindings here. I also have a browser demo: https://ansi-o-matic.molinero.dev

What interests me about it is the unicode mosaic output format that looks higher quality than the usual upper half block or braille character approaches without needing to support a special protocol.

BubbleTea is great, but it doesn't have support for Kitty Graphics. https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea/issues/163

Yes, any of the inline ones should work.

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). Other terminal graphics packages do this, and so can Chafa with chafa --symbols vhalf. However, Chafa uses more symbols by default, greatly improving quality.

There are more examples in the gallery!

Features

Supports most popular image formats, including animated GIFs.
Outputs to all popular terminal graphics formats: Sixels, Kitty, iTerm2, Unicode mosaics.
Combines Unicode symbols from multiple selectable ranges for optimal output.
Fullwidth character support, e.g. Chinese, Japanese, Korean.
Glyphs can be loaded from any font file supported by Freetype (TTF, OTF, PCF, etc).
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.
Works with most modern and classic terminals and terminal emulators.
Documented, stable C API.
Fast & lean: SIMD optimized, multithreaded.
Suitable for terminal graphics, ANSI art composition and even black & white print.

Some of the features are discussed in a series of blog posts:

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.

There is C API documentation for application developers.

Erica Ferrua Edwardsdóttir is developing Python bindings that allow Chafa to be used in Python programs. These are documented on their own site.

Héctor Molinero Fernández maintains JavaScript bindings that allow Chafa to be used in Node.js, web browsers, and more. These are documented on their own site.

Community

Please bring your questions to our ~~secret business~~ friendly Matrix chat. Stay a while and listen, or talk about terminals, software or your choice of breakfast cereal. All are welcome, but an appreciation for terminals, programming and/or computer graphics is likely to enhance your experience.

Although the chat's history is hidden from non-members, this is a public forum, so if your ambition is to overthrow the government/megacorps by way of an underground network of refurbished Minitels, you may want to keep it under your hat. Furthermore, and hopefully obviously, we treat our fellow humans with respect. Have fun!

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