Images in the terminal

I get a lot of comments/questions about how to get w3m-img mode working with neofetch. This wiki page will guide you through setting up neofetch/w3m-img and will try to explain the various quirks of this mode.

Enabling Image Mode

Neofetch 2.0.1 changes the default image mode to ascii from wallpaper. From 2.0.1 onwards an additional step is required to use image mode.

You can either use the launch option --w3m (also --w3m /path/to/img / --w3m /path/to/dir/) or you can edit the config file to enable image mode. The option you have to change is called image_backend, just change this from ascii to one of the other valid values and image mode will be enabled.

Requirements

Dependencies

• w3m-img

  • Image rendering in the terminal.
  • This is sometimes bundled together with w3m.
  • kitty, Terminology and iTerm users don't need to install w3m-img.

• imagemagick

  • Generating thumbnails and cropping the images.

• A terminal emulator that supports \033[14t or xdotool or xwininfo + xprop or xwininfo + xdpyinfo

  • Getting the terminal window size in pixels so that we can size the image correctly.

Terminal Emulator

The table below lists my testing of various terminal emulators, what works and what doesn't.

Terminal Emulator	w3m-img	Quirks
Gnome-terminal	Yes	- Image disappears on window focus and resize
		- Possible issues on Fedora, see #295
iTerm	N/A	See [1]
konsole	Yes
st	Yes	Image disappears on window focus and resize
Terminator	Yes	Image disappears on window focus and resize
Terminology	N/A	See [2]
Termite	Yes	Highlighting the image makes the highlighted parts disappear
tilda	No
URxvt	Yes	Image disappears on window focus and resize
Xfce4-terminal	Yes	Image disappears on window focus and resize
Xterm	Yes
kitty	N/A	See [3]
alacritty	No

[1] iTerm doesn't require w3m-img to display images. Instead it uses a set of escape sequences built into iTerm.

[2] Terminology doesn't require w3m-img to display images. Instead it uses a builtin program called tycat.

[3] kitty doesn't require w3m-img to display images. Instead it uses a builtin program called kitty +kitten icat.

Note: For image mode to work, the w3m-img column must say yes and you must have the dependencies installed.

Image source

Neofetch by default will try to use your current wallpaper as the image. If the wallpaper detection fails we fallback to ascii mode, when that happens you should try and launch neofetch with --w3m --source path/to/image or --w3m --source path/to/dir/.

The list below shows the current wallpaper setters we support.

Linux / BSD

• feh
• nitrogen
• gsettings

macOS / Windows

• Builtin wallpaper setter

If your wallpaper setter isn't listed here and there's an easy way to find where the current wallpaper is stored, open an issue and I'll gladly add support for it.

Usage

Once you've installed w3m-img, imagemagick, have a terminal emulator that meets the criteria above and have a working image source, neofetch should display images correctly.

if neofetch won't display the images check if the terminal support images. To do this you need to launch the command

w3m google.com

If you don't see it your terminal support only text, no image.

If neofetch still won't display the images then you should open a new issue on github and provide me with a verbose log.