cacaview(1)

💖 cacaview 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because we're talking about cacaview — that's the cacaview(1) page from the General Commands Manual, and it's lowkey one of the most iconic little tools in the whole libcaca cinematic universe. ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

cacaview — ASCII image browser. yes. that's the whole vibe. an image browser that lives in your terminal. slay. 👑

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

cacaview [FILE...]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So cacaview is a lightweight text mode image viewer, fr fr. It renders your images using colour ASCII characters, which is genuinely the cutest thing. It's a powerful add-on to those famous console programs you already know and love — like the mutt email client, the slrn newsreader, and the links or w3m web browsers. group chat but make it terminal. 💅

And the format support? obsessed. cacaview can load the most widespread image formats out there: PNG, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP etc. (yes, PNG said what it said twice, she's a main character, we let her 💀).

You can zoom and scroll the image around for more details, and you get to choose between four different dithering modes. And the best part? All commands are accessible through a single key press. one press. no menus. no stress. periodt. 🫶

✨ KEYS ✨

the keys are the moment, honestly. here's every single one:

• ? — show the help screen. when in doubt, ? it out. 🙈
• n, p — switch to next image, previous image
• Left, Right, Up, Down or h, l, k, j — scroll the image around
• +, - — zoom in and out
• z — reset the zoom level to normal (the "okay bestie breathe, back to default" key)
• f — switch fullscreen mode (hide/show menu and status bars)
• d — toggle the dithering mode (no dithering, 4x4 ordered dithering, 8x8 ordered dithering and random dithering)
• q — exit the program. goodbye, queen. 🎀

🌈 EXAMPLE 🌈

here's the classic, no notes:

cacaview /usr/share/pixmaps/*.*

💀 BUGS 💀

okay so we have to be honest here, no cap:

• There is no support for aspect ratio yet. your images may be doing their own little stretch, and we cannot fix it for you.
• Also, since there is no way yet to load an image from cacaview, it is completely useless when run without an argument. like, genuinely useless. it just sits there. gorgeous, but useless. 😭

bestie please pass it a file. i am begging. give the girl something to render. 🥺

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• img2txt(1)

💜 AUTHOR 💜

This manual page was written by Sam Hocevar <sam@hocevar.net>. thank you for your service, legend. 🌟

and that's the whole page!! stay zoomed, stay dithered, and remember: a single key press is all it takes. iykyk. 🦋✨

this has been cacaview(1) from the libcaca crew, dated 2003-11-30 — written by me, your favourite terminal bestie, who loves you and also loves ASCII. mwah. 💖💅🎀