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Dev tools · January 7, 2019

The worst ANSI renderer, except for all the others

A tool that lets you render beautiful graphics in both modern and classic terminal environments; this is the version 1.0 release announcement.

The worst ANSI renderer, except for all the others launched on January 7, 2019 with 71 votes, #598 of 2,587 launches that month and more than 90% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 7 years on.

Visit hpjansson.org ↗Alternativestop 23% of January 2019

In plain words

Chafa is a tool for rendering images as ANSI art in both modern and classic terminal environments. Version 1.0 introduces new symbol ranges including ASCII and Braille, improved image preprocessing, and a halftone/dithering option. The tool is designed for developers who want to display graphics in terminal applications and is optimized for fast performance.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

Chafa ( github ) started out as a small piece of supporting code for an obscure personal project I may announce at some indefinite point in the future. Then I decided to release it as a tongue-in-cheek thing for the VT100 anniversary last year, and, well… it gathered a bit of steam. Since I'm not one to leave well enough alone, I packaged it up over the holidays for the 1.0 release . It brings a pile of improvements, e.g. new symbol ranges like ASCII and Braille, better image preprocessing and a new --fill option for halftone/dithering. It's also, like, real fast now, and the build is much less brittle. Big thanks to everyone who contributed to this release: Adam Borowski , Felix Yan…from hpjansson.org

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