icat
========================================

*Display images in the terminal*

The ``icat`` kitten can be used to display arbitrary images in the |kitty|
terminal. Using it is as simple as::

    kitty +kitten icat image.jpeg

It supports all image types supported by `ImageMagick
<https://www.imagemagick.org>`_. It even works over SSH. For details, see
the :doc:`kitty graphics protocol </graphics-protocol>`.

You might want to create an alias in your shell's configuration files::

   alias icat="kitty +kitten icat"

Then you can simply use ``icat image.png`` to view images.

.. note::

    `ImageMagick <https://www.imagemagick.org>`_ must be installed for ``icat`` to
    work.

.. note::

    kitty's image display protocol may not work when used within a terminal
    multiplexer such as ``screen`` or ``tmux``, depending on whether the
    multiplexer has added support for it or not.


.. program:: kitty +kitten icat


The ``icat`` kitten has various command line arguments to allow it to be used
from inside other programs to display images. In particular, :option:`--place`,
:option:`--detect-support`, :option:`--silent` and :option:`--print-window-size`.

If you are trying to integrate icat into a complex program like a file
manager or editor, there are a few things to keep in mind. icat works by
communicating over the TTY device, it both writes to and reads from the TTY.
So it is imperative that while it is running the host program does not do
any TTY I/O. Any key presses or other input from the user on the TTY device
will be discarded. At a minimum, you should use the :option:`--silent` and
:option:`--transfer-mode` command line arguments. To be
really robust you should consider writing proper support for the
:doc:`../graphics-protocol` in the program instead.  Nowadays there are many
libraries that have support for it.


.. include:: /generated/cli-kitten-icat.rst
