fancy-cat is a PDF viewer designed for terminal emulators supporting the Kitty graphics protocol. It displays document pages directly within a terminal, providing a way to read PDF files without opening a conventional graphical viewer.
The application uses a modal interface inspired by Neovim. Its view mode handles document navigation, while command mode provides access to additional operations. Keyboard mappings and application behaviour can be customised through a JSON configuration file.
fancy-cat supports automatic document reloading, colour adjustments and zoom controls. It is particularly appealing to users who want to keep document reading within their existing terminal workflows while retaining graphical PDF rendering.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Displays PDF pages using the Kitty graphics protocol.
- Renders document content within compatible terminal emulators.
- Modal interface inspired by Neovim.
- Separate viewing and command modes.
- Configurable keyboard mappings.
- JSON-based configuration of application behaviour.
- Supports runtime configuration changes.
- Automatic document reloading when files change.
- Page navigation with previous-page and next-page commands.
- Zoom controls for adjusting document size.
- Colourisation mode for dark document viewing.
- Status bar displaying document information.
- Configurable commands for controlling the viewer.
- Cross-platform support – runs on Linux and macOS.
Website: github.com/freref/fancy-cat
Support:
Developer: freref and contributors
License: GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
fancy-cat is written in Zig. Learn Zig with our recommended free tutorials.
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