Terminal Compatibility

Terminal Compatibility

slk works in any modern terminal, but the experience scales with what your terminal supports. This table summarizes the important capabilities; pick something from the top of the list for the richest experience.

Terminal	Inline images	True-pixel avatars	OSC 8 links	OSC 52 clipboard	Notes
kitty	kitty graphics	yes	yes	yes	Best overall experience. Older versions may need clipboard_control write-clipboard.
ghostty	kitty graphics	yes	yes	yes	Recommended.
WezTerm (recent)	kitty graphics	yes	yes	yes
foot (Wayland)	sixel	half-block	yes	yes	Best Wayland-native option.
iTerm2 ≥ 3.5	half-block	half-block	yes	yes	Implements kitty graphics but not unicode placeholders, so slk falls back to half-block.
Alacritty	half-block	half-block	yes (≥0.11)	yes	Fast and reliable, but no inline images.
gnome-terminal (recent)	half-block	half-block	yes	yes
mlterm	sixel	half-block	partial	partial
screen	half-block	half-block	no	no	No working OSC 52 path; consider switching to tmux.

Inside tmux

slk forces half-block for inline images regardless of the outer terminal — pixel-protocol pass-through inside tmux is unreliable. OSC 52 clipboard requires set -g set-clipboard on in your tmux config.

Overriding the image protocol

You can override slk's image-protocol pick via the [appearance] image_protocol config key (auto / kitty / sixel / halfblock / off). See Configuration for details.

Related

• Clipboard and OSC 52 — getting copy/paste to land
• Tradeoffs and Non-Goals — image rendering caveats (animated GIFs, unfurls, threads pane sixel)