PixelTerm-C is a high-performance terminal image browser written in C, based on the Chafa library.
PixelTerm-C is a C implementation of the original PixelTerm application, designed to provide significantly better performance than the Python version while maintaining all the same functionality.
By leveraging the Chafa library directly instead of using subprocess calls, we eliminate the overhead of Python interpretation and external process creation.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Multi-format Support – Supports JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, WebP, TIFF and other mainstream image formats.
- Animated GIF Support – Play animated GIFs directly in the terminal with proper timing and high-quality rendering.
- TrueColor Rendering – Full 24-bit color support with automatic detection and optimization.
- Smart Browsing – Automatically detects image files in directories with directory navigation support.
- Keyboard Navigation – Switch between images with arrow keys, supporting various terminal environments.
- Adaptive Display – Automatically adapts to terminal size changes.
- Minimal Interface – No redundant information, focused on image browsing experience.
- High Performance – 5-10x faster than Python version with significantly lower memory usage.
- Circular Navigation – Seamless browsing with wrap-around between first and last images.
- Multi-architecture Support – Native support for both amd64 and aarch64 (ARM64) architectures.
- Mouse Support – Intuitive mouse navigation, selection, and scrolling across all modes.
- Preloading – Image preloading for faster navigation (enabled by default).
- Dithering – Improves visual quality in color-limited terminals (disabled by default).
Website: github.com/zouyonghe/PixelTerm-C
Support:
Developer: zouyonghe
License: GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0
PixelTerm-C is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Terminal-Based Image Viewers | |
|---|---|
| timg | Image and video viewer with good range of features. Written in C++ |
| Chafa | Character Art Facsimile |
| viu | Rust-based image viewer |
| vv | Image viewer for sixel terminals |
| TIV | Tiny C++ program that displays images in a terminal |
| Ranger | Terminal-based file manager supporting high quality previews of image files |
| mcat | Extended cat command |
| icat | Cat like utility can specify multiple image files and/or directories |
| PixelTerm-C | High-performance terminal image browser written in C |
| pho | Lightweight image viewer |
| catimg | Renders images in the terminal |
| PTUI | Real-time image preview capabilities |
| imv | X11/Wayland image viewer |
| iv | Image viewer using terminal graphics |
| ucollage | Extensible command line image viewer |
| TermVisage | Front-end to the term-image library |
| Foto | Simple image viewer |
| rsimg | Uses crossterm and zune as dependencies |
| pxv | Instant feature rich terminal image viewer |
| imgcat | Displays images and gifs in your terminal emulator. |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |