gifterm

Play animated GIFs natively in your terminal.

Homepage | crates.io | docs.rs

Why

Terminals are where we live. They deserve to feel alive. gifterm brings lofi vibes, pixel art, and ambient animation to your workspace -- no browser tab, no electron app, just frames on your GPU.

Install

cargo install gifterm

Or build from source:

git clone https://github.com/nalediym/gifterm.git
cd gifterm
cargo install --path .

Single static binary. No runtime dependencies.

Usage

gifterm lofi.gif                  # play a GIF
gifterm lofi.gif --width 400      # scale down to 400px wide
gifterm lofi.gif --cache-only     # decode and cache without playing

Output uses a quiet gifterm <action> <detail> format:

gifterm  decoding  lofi.gif
gifterm  scaling   640x480 -> 400x300 (lanczos3)
gifterm  cached    47 frames (1840 KB) -> ~/.cache/gifterm/a1b2c3d4
gifterm  playing   47 frames, loop=infinite, id=1001

The animation is fire-and-forget: it persists in kitty after gifterm exits, living on the GPU like an <img> on a webpage. Clear the screen to dismiss it.

Multiple animations can run simultaneously -- each gets a unique image ID.

Library usage

gifterm can be used as a Rust library (without the CLI dependency):

[dependencies]
gifterm = { version = "0.1", default-features = false }

use std::path::Path;

let path = Path::new("animation.gif");
let (meta, frames) = gifterm::load_frames(path, Some(400)).unwrap();
gifterm::play(&meta, &frames).unwrap();

The library compiles without clap and targets wasm32. See docs.rs/gifterm for full API documentation.

Requirements

A terminal that supports the kitty graphics protocol:

• kitty -- full support
• WezTerm -- full support
• Konsole -- partial support

tmux blocks the graphics protocol by default. Set allow-passthrough on in your tmux.conf, or run gifterm in a raw terminal window.

How it works

gifterm decodes GIF frames into raw RGBA buffers using the image crate, optionally scaling them down with Lanczos3 filtering. Decoded frames are cached to ~/.cache/gifterm/ keyed by a SHA-256 hash of the source file, so subsequent plays are instant.

Frames are transmitted to the terminal via kitty's graphics protocol using temp-file transfer (t=t), then assembled into a looping animation that kitty manages entirely on the GPU side. The CLI process exits immediately -- the animation keeps running.

Contributing

Contributions welcome. To get started:

git clone https://github.com/nalediym/gifterm.git
cd gifterm
cargo build

The codebase is split into src/lib.rs (core library) and src/main.rs (CLI wrapper), with a straightforward pipeline: GIF decode -> frame cache -> kitty graphics protocol transmission.

Some areas that could use help:

• Sixel support -- for terminals that don't support kitty graphics (e.g. foot, mlterm)
• APNG / WebP -- extend beyond GIF to other animated formats
• Speed control -- --speed 2x or --fps 30 flags
• Cleanup command -- gifterm --clear to remove cached frames

Open an issue before starting large changes so we can align on direction.

License

MIT