What is terminal-image?

terminal-image lets you display pictures right inside your terminal, that text-based window where developers run commands. Instead of opening a separate image viewer, you can show a JPEG, PNG, or even an animated GIF directly in the same place where your code output appears. This is handy for scripts, demos, or any tool where you want to mix text and visuals without leaving the terminal. At a high level, it works by generating special text codes that terminals understand as color and positioning instructions. If you're using a modern terminal like iTerm2 or Kitty that supports advanced graphics protocols, the image shows up in full resolution. For any other terminal, it falls back to drawing the picture using colored block characters, essentially tiny colored squares that piece together into a recognizable image. You just pass it a file path or image data, and it handles the rest. You can optionally control sizing by percentage or row/column count, and it maintains aspect ratio by default. Anyone building command-line tools in JavaScript would find this useful. For example, if you're creating a script that processes screenshots, generates charts, or fetches images from the web, you can preview results inline without extra steps. The README includes an example of pulling a remote image and displaying it immediately. Animated GIFs are also supported, with options to control framerate and how each frame renders. A notable design choice is the automatic protocol detection. Rather than requiring you to know or specify which terminal you're using, the library checks what's available and picks the best rendering method on its own. You can override this and force the block-character fallback if needed, but the default behavior just works. This makes it practical for tools that need to run across different setups without configuration.