Install viu Terminal Image Viewer on Ubuntu 26.04

The viu is a command-line tool that displays images directly inside the terminal. When supported, it uses the Kitty graphics protocol or iTerm2 inline image protocol to render full-color images. On terminals without graphics protocol support, viu falls back to Unicode half-block characters with ANSI colors, allowing images to be viewed in a wide range of terminal environments. This tutorial explains how to install viu terminal image viewer on Ubuntu 26.04.

Install viu

Download the latest prebuilt viu binary from the GitHub releases and save it to /usr/local/bin:

sudo curl -sSLo /usr/local/bin/viu https://github.com/atanunq/viu/releases/latest/download/viu-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl

Grant execute permissions to the downloaded binary:

sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/viu

Confirm that the installation completed successfully by checking the viu version:

viu --version

Testing viu

Retrieve a sample image that can be used for testing:

curl -sSo test.png https://raw.githubusercontent.com/opencv/opencv/master/samples/data/butterfly.jpg

Render the image in the terminal:

viu test.png

If the image appears in the terminal window, the viu is functioning correctly.

Uninstall viu

If the viu is no longer needed, delete the installed binary from the system:

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/bin/viu