PTUI (Picture TUI) is a terminal-based image viewer written in Rust that provides a file browser interface with real-time image preview capabilities.
The software needs:
- chafa – For converting images to ANSI/terminal output
- ImageMagick (identify command) – For image dimension detection
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Support for common image formats.
- Real-time image preview using ANSI terminal graphics.
- Multiple picture-to-text converters: chafa and jp2a supported so far.
- Slide show mode with arrow-key support and transitions (transitions only with jp2a).
- Navigate with arrow keys or vim-style j/k.
- Enter directories with Enter, go back with Backspace.
- Multilingual support (English, German, Spanish, French, Japanese, Chinese).
- Dynamic window resizing with [ and ] keys and when terminal changes.
- Caching of rendered images for performance.
- Scrollable file lists for directories with many files.
- Support for both image and text file preview.
- Open in file system browser (if available).
- Delete file.
- Save picture to ascii.
- Sort by date asc/desc or name.
- Dynamic reloading of configuration.
Website: github.com/narbs/ptui
Support:
Developer: Christian Clare
License: MIT License
PTUI is written in Rust. Learn Rust 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.
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