gifterm — Play GIFs in your terminal

$ gifterm lofi-rain.gif --width 400
gifterm decoding lofi-rain.gif
gifterm scaling 640x480 -> 400x300 (lanczos3)
gifterm decoded 47/47 frames
gifterm cached 47 frames (1840 KB)
gifterm sending 47 frames, 400x300
gifterm playing 47 frames, loop=infinite, id=1001

$ gifterm pixel-cat.gif
gifterm cache hit 12 frames, 120x120
gifterm playing 12 frames, loop=infinite, id=1002

What it does

Built for terminal natives.

GPU-native playback

Animations persist in kitty's GPU memory after gifterm exits. Like an <img> tag for your terminal. Clear the screen to dismiss.

Content-addressed cache

Frames are decoded once, cached by SHA-256 hash. Second play skips decode entirely. Width variants get their own cache key.

Fire and forget

gifterm exits immediately after transmitting frames. The animation loops on the GPU independently. Multiple GIFs run simultaneously.

Lanczos3 scaling

Pass --width 400 and gifterm scales with Lanczos3 filtering. Original aspect ratio preserved. Scaled frames cached separately.

Single static binary

Rust. No Python, no Node, no runtime dependencies. Compiles to one file you can drop on any machine.

Library + CLI

Import as a Rust crate without the CLI dependency. The library targets wasm32. Embed GIF playback in your own terminal tools.

How it works

Three steps, then gifterm gets out of the way.

Decode

GIF frames → raw RGBA buffers via the image crate. Optional Lanczos3 downscale.

Cache

Frames written to ~/.cache/gifterm/, keyed by SHA-256. Next time, decode is skipped.

Transmit

Frames sent via kitty graphics protocol. Terminal assembles a looping animation on the GPU.

// Library usage
use std::path::Path;

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

Install

One command.

gifterm works with any terminal that supports the kitty graphics protocol.

$ cargo install gifterm

Compatible terminals

kitty

Full support

WezTerm