ctpv

Terminal previewer

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ctpv is a previewer utility for terminals.

It supports previews for source code, archives, PDF files, images and videos (see Previews).

Image previews are powered by one of these:

• Überzug (X11 only)
• Kitty terminal
• Chafa

ctpv is a remake of an awesome program named stpv written in C. stpv worked perfectly for me, except it was kinda sluggish because it was written in POSIX shell. ctpv is an attempt to make a faster version of stpv and add some new features.

Originally it was made for lf file manager but I believe that it can be easily integrated into other programs as well (either via configuration file like in lf or a simple wrapper script).

Dependencies

Libraries

• libcrypto
• libmagic

Previews

Previewing each file type requires specific programs. If a program is not found on the system, ctpv will try to use another one. Only one program is required for each file type. For example, you only need either elinks, lynx or w3m installed on your system to view HTML files.

File types	Programs
any	exiftool cat
archive	atool
diff	colordiff delta diff-so-fancy
directory	ls
font	fontimage
gpg-encrypted	gpg
html	elinks lynx w3m
image	ueberzug chafa
json	jq
markdown	mdcat
office	libreoffice
pdf	pdftoppm
text	bat cat highlight source-highlight
torrent	transmission-show
video	ffmpegthumbnailer

Installation

Manual

git clone https://github.com/NikitaIvanovV/ctpv
cd ctpv
sudo make install

Uninstall with sudo make uninstall

AUR

If you are an Arch Linux user, you can install ctpv-git AUR package.

yay -S ctpv-git

Integration

lf file manager

Add these lines to your lf config (usually located at ~/.config/lf/lfrc).

set previewer ctpv
set cleaner ctpvclear
&ctpv -s $id
&ctpvquit $id

Documentation

Full documentation on command line options, configuration and how to define custom previews can be found here: https://nikitaivanovv.github.io/ctpv/