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sixel

Sixel allows displaying graphics at the command line; it's technology from the 80s that never made it — until quite recently.

A picture is worth a thousand words:

/img/sixel_sample.png

Utilities

  • img2sixel
  • niicat (not yet installed on Medusa; users should install in a venv for now)

Setup

Currently, very few terminals support sixel.

macOS
Download and install iTerm2. The built-in terminal does not support sixel.
Linux

xterm is the recommended terminal for using sixel. None of the following popular terminals have in-tree support: GNOME Terminal, Konsole, urxvt, st.

If you're using the IPSY dotfiles then everything should "just work". Otherwise, you will need to adjust your .Xresources settings.

Testing

A test image is provided as part of the IPSY dotfiles:

cat ~/.dotfiles/test/snake.six