I built an image viewer for the terminal that works everywhere

3 months ago 2

While working in terminal environments (especially on servers or minimal systems), I often found myself wishing for a way to view images without launching a graphical interface.

I built this because I often work on ARM devices or inside TTY without any GUI — and I wanted a tool that just shows an image, no magic. Maybe someone else needs it too.

That’s how PIT was born — a lightweight PNG/JPEG viewer that renders directly in the terminal using ANSI escape codes. It supports scaling, panning, rotation, PNG transparency, and even 256/16-color modes. No external dependencies — just C and the standard library.

It runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, BSD, Termux, WSL — even on ARM, RISC-V, PowerPC. You can build a ~250KB binary and run it nearly anywhere.

GitHub: https://github.com/Ferki-git-creator/phono-in-terminal-image-viewer-rgb-c-textmode

Would love feedback on usability, code quality, or whether this kind of tool is worth evolving further.

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