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Kitty graphics protocol

Rio supports the Kitty graphics protocol, allowing applications to display images directly in the terminal.

Supported features​

  • Image formats: PNG, RGB (24-bit), RGBA (32-bit), Grayscale, Grayscale+Alpha
  • Transmission: Direct (inline base64), file, temporary file, shared memory
  • Compression: Zlib
  • Chunked transfers: Multi-part image transmission
  • Placements: Display images at cursor or specific positions with z-index layering
  • Virtual placements: Unicode placeholder-based rendering
  • Deletion: By image ID, placement ID, cursor position, column, row, z-index, image number, cell+z filter, and ID range
  • Z-index layering: Images render below or above text depending on z-index

Usage​

You can display images with tools that support the Kitty graphics protocol:

# Using kitty's built-in tool
kitty +kitten icat image.png

# Using other compatible tools
chafa --format=kitty image.png
timg -p kitty image.png

Applications like notcurses also use the Kitty graphics protocol for rich terminal UIs.

Per-image GPU textures​

Rio renders each Kitty image with its own dedicated GPU texture using a separate rendering pipeline from text. This ensures images don't leak GPU memory and are efficiently cleaned up when no longer displayed.

For more information on the protocol: sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/graphics-protocol