Chafa
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 31 of 86 privilege escalation tools by recommenders
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.
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.
11 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 11
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 11 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Higher quality than block or braille output
“looks higher quality than the usual upper half block or braille character approaches”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “Chafa: Terminal Graphics for the 21st Century” “99% of the time, it will be hard to beat chafa”
Comment from 17 Jan 2026 in “ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering” Sixel and kitty renderer support
“I've gotten best results with chafa using sixel”
Comment from 13 Jan 2026 in “Text-Based Web Browsers” “it has both sixel and kitty graphic renderers”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “Chafa: Terminal Graphics for the 21st Century” Strong overall praise
“it really is the best tool for terminal graphics in my opinion”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “Chafa: Terminal Graphics for the 21st Century” “I have nothing but good things to say about it!”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “Chafa: Terminal Graphics for the 21st Century” “99% of the time, it will be hard to beat chafa”
Comment from 17 Jan 2026 in “ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering”
Other privilege escalation tools people recommend
The four most recommended other privilege escalation tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 86 privilege escalation tools, rankedWhat people said
12 of the 16 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Chafa and XTerm. It works.”
“But results are not as good as the OP's work.”
“99% of the time, it will be hard to beat chafa”
“I've gotten best results with chafa using sixel”
“I'm currently using this for a teams/zoom/meet replacement”
“I have nothing but good things to say about it!”
“it has both sixel and kitty graphic renderers”
“chafa can work with streams”
“looks higher quality than the usual upper half block or braille character approaches”
“this provides infinite posibilities for my obsession with text-based apps/CLI”
“I use it as a fallback option for terminals without proper terminal graphics support”
“it really is the best tool for terminal graphics in my opinion”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.