`imgcat`

The imgcat CLI, written in Python (and Python API, too).

It works with iTerm2 and WezTerm, and even inside tmux (for tmux, see Notes below).

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 10

Python 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

tmux 2.5+ cannot display big images. Use tmux <= 2.4 or run outside tmux.
In tmux 3.3a or higher, it is required to have set-option -g allow-passthrough on in ~/.tmux.conf.
TODO: General platform/emulator support (introduce multiple backends) including Sixel

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)