# atanunq/viu

Terminal image viewer with native support for iTerm and Kitty

Repository: https://github.com/atanunq/viu
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/viu
Language: Rust
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: cli, rust, image-viewer, terminal
Last push: 2025-12-15T10:20:59+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 56/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 57, release rhythm 29, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 2700, "days_push": 261, "days_rel": 261, "gap_med": 209.5, "n_releases_24m": 3}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 3265, forks 75 (observed 2026-08-28T04:07:52.880557+00:00)

## What it is
Viu is a small command-line image viewer written in Rust that displays images directly in the terminal. It natively supports the iTerm2 and Kitty graphics protocols, with a fallback to Unicode half blocks and truecolor/ansi256 output.

## Use cases
- view images from the terminal
- preview images over ssh without a gui
- play animated gifs in the terminal
- quickly check an image file while working in the shell
- pipe image data from stdin to view it
- resize images to custom dimensions in terminal output

## When to choose
- you work primarily in the terminal or over ssh and want to view images without leaving the shell
- you use a terminal that supports the Kitty or iTerm graphics protocols for high-quality rendering
- you want a lightweight, fast, single-binary image viewer written in Rust

## When to avoid
- you need a full graphical image viewer with zoom, pan, and editing features
- your terminal supports neither Kitty, iTerm, nor Sixel protocols and half-block rendering quality is insufficient
- you need to view very large image collections with thumbnail browsing

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: active
- function: image-processing, cli
- domain: media, developer-tools
- platform: windows, cli, cross-platform
- tags: image-viewer, terminal, kitty-graphics-protocol, iterm, gif, rust, command-line, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- atanunq/viu (main) score 56

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:52.880557+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:43:51.106401+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/atanunq/viu (fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:52.880557+00:00, sha d8c3808e4816)
  - registry_crates: https://crates.io/api/v1/crates/viu (fetched 2026-08-29T09:36:32.970036+00:00, sha 88558e753b7e)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.