ASCIIGenome is a command-line genome browser that runs entirely inside a terminal window and renders genomic data using ASCII characters.
It’s aimed at researchers who need to inspect genomic regions quickly without relying on a graphical desktop, making it especially useful on remote systems while still offering flexible navigation, searching, filtering, and visualisation of reads, annotations, and quantitative tracks.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Supports a wide range of genomics file formats including BAM, SAM, CRAM, BED, GTF, GFF, VCF, BCF, bigWig, bigBed, bedGraph, and TDF.
- Uses indexed access to keep memory usage low when working with large genomic datasets.
- Can open both local files and remote resources available via URL or FTP address.
- Provides interactive terminal commands with command history, tab completion, track searching, and filtering options.
- Can save the current view as either plain text or PDF screenshots.
- Includes support for BS-Seq alignment visualisation.
Website: github.com/dariober/ASCIIGenome
Support:
Developer: Dario Beraldi
License: MIT License
ASCIIGenome is written in Java. Learn Java with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Desktop Genome Browsers | |
|---|---|
| IGV | High-performance visualization genome browser tool |
| IGB | Integrated Genome Browser |
| JBrowse | Fast, scalable genome browser |
| Tablet | Graphical viewer for sequence assemblies and alignments |
| UGENE | Set of integrated bioinformatics software |
| Artemis | Genome viewer and annotation tool |
| Apollo | Instantaneous, collaborative genomic annotation editor |
| CutePeaks | Cross platform Sanger Trace file viewer |
| Genome Workbench | Integrated tools for studying and analyzing genetic data |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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