# Chafa

11 Hacker News commenters recommended Chafa and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Free command-line tool that renders images in terminals with good quality, including sixel and kitty output. Caveat: one commenter found results not as good as a specific example.

## Why people recommend it

- Higher quality than block or braille output (2 comments): "looks higher quality than the usual upper half block or braille character approaches" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46281605)) "99% of the time, it will be hard to beat chafa" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46657857))
- Sixel and kitty renderer support (2 comments): "I've gotten best results with chafa using sixel" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46604971)) "it has both sixel and kitty graphic renderers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46283310))
- Strong overall praise (3 comments): "it really is the best tool for terminal graphics in my opinion" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46279554)) "I have nothing but good things to say about it!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46283374)) "99% of the time, it will be hard to beat chafa" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46657857))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [fzf](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fzf.md): 78 recommend
- [jq](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jq.md): 75 recommend
- [grep](https://hackerapproved.com/p/grep.md): 65 recommend
- [Atuin](https://hackerapproved.com/p/atuin.md): 63 recommend
- [GitHub CLI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/github-cli.md): 49 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Chafa", https://hackerapproved.com/p/chafa/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).