imgcat
The imgcat CLI, written in Python (and Python API, too).
It works with iTerm2, and even inside tmux.
Installation and Usage
pip install imgcat
Command-line interface (similar to iTerm2's imgcat):
$ imgcat local_image.png
$ imgcat a.png b.png c.png
$ cat from_stdin.gif | imgcat
# height is 10 lines
$ imgcat a.png --height 10Python API:
>>> from imgcat import imgcat
# from the content of image (e.g. buffer in python3, str in python2)
>>> imgcat(open("./local_image.png"))
# or numpy arrays!
>>> im = skimage.data.chelsea() # [300, 451, 3] ndarray, dtype=uint8
>>> imgcat(im, height=7)
# matplotlib, PIL.Image, etc.
>>> imgcat(Image.fromarray(im))
>>> import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
>>> fig, ax = plt.subplots(); ax.plot([1, 2, 3, 4, 5])
>>> imgcat(fig)Matplotlib Backend: module://imgcat
MPLBACKEND="module://imgcat" python draw_matplotlib.py>>> import matplotlib
>>> matplotlib.use("module://imgcat")
>>> import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
>>> fig, ax = plt.subplots()
>>> ax.text(0.5, 0.5, "Hello World!");
>>> fig.show()
# an image shall be displayed on your terminal!IPython magic (works both in terminal and notebook)
%load_ext imgcat
%imgcat skimage.data.chelsea()
Notes
- Currently, tmux 2.5+ cannot display big images. Use tmux <= 2.4 or run outside tmux.
- TODO: General platform/emulator support (introduce multiple backends)
Related Projects
- Original implementation: imgcat from iTerm2 (limited tmux support)
- There are modified versions with better tmux support by Eric Dobson and by @krtx
- Node.js: term-img (no tmux support)
- Go: iterm2-imagetools (no tmux support)