ASCII art

From ArchWiki


Software

  • arttime — Brings curated ASCII/ANSI/UTF-8 art, flip-flopping animation, animated storyboards to terminal. It also is a full-featured clock, timer, and time manager. So you can now do boring time-management while looking at pretty text-art.
https://github.com/poetaman/arttime || arttime-gitAUR
  • ASCII Draw — An app to draw diagrams or anything using only ASCII.
https://github.com/Nokse22/ascii-draw || ascii-drawAUR
  • ascii-rain — Comfy rain for your console written in C with Ncurses.
https://github.com/nkleemann/ascii-rain || ascii-rain-gitAUR
  • Asciiquarium — An aquarium/sea animation in ASCII art.
https://robobunny.com/projects/asciiquarium/ || asciiquarium
  • Banner — Print large banners to ASCII terminals.
https://shh.thathost.com/pub-unix/ || banner
  • bash-pipes — An animated pipes terminal screensaver.
https://github.com/pipeseroni/pipes.sh || bash-pipesAUR
  • boxes — Text mode box and comment drawing filter.
https://boxes.thomasjensen.com/ || boxesAUR
  • cbonsai — A bonsai tree generator, written in C using ncurses.
https://gitlab.com/jallbrit/cbonsai || cbonsaiAUR
  • catimg — Print images in a terminal with 256 colors support.
https://github.com/posva/catimg || catimg
  • cmatrix — Animation that plays in terminal based on the text from "The Matrix".
https://github.com/abishekvashok/cmatrix || cmatrix
  • DurDraw — ANSI, ASCII and Unicode art editor for the terminal, with animation, 256 colors, and mouse support.
https://github.com/cmang/durdraw || durdrawAUR
  • FIGlet — A program for making large letters out of ordinary text.
http://www.figlet.org/ || figlet
  • jp2a — A small utility for converting JPG, PNG and WebP images to ASCII.
https://github.com/Talinx/jp2a || jp2a
  • Letterpress — GUI application to convert images into a picture made up of ASCII characters. It uses jp2a as backend.
https://apps.gnome.org/Letterpress/ || letterpress
  • neo-matrix — Simulates the digital rain from "The Matrix"
https://github.com/st3w/neo || neo-matrixAUR
  • nyancat — Renders nyancat in your terminal.
https://nyancat.dakko.us/ || nyancat
  • TOIlet — Free replacement for the FIGlet utility.
http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/toilet || toilet
  • tty-clock — A digital clock in ncurses.
https://github.com/xorg62/tty-clock || tty-clockAUR
  • sl — A steam locomotive runs across your terminal when you type sl as you meant to type ls.
https://github.com/eyJhb/sl || sl
  • emacs — Artist-mode is a built-in package in GNU Emacs that allows you to create simple drawings and diagrams using the Emacs text editor.
https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ArtistMode || emacs
  • mkinitcpio-archlogo — Add colored Arch Linux ASCII art logo to early boot process.
https://github.com/eworm-de/mkinitcpio-archlogo || mkinitcpio-archlogoAUR

For diagrams there is https://asciiflow.com/.

Arch ASCII logos

See the original forum thread.

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From screenfetch 3.6.5-1:

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From alsiAUR 0.4.7-1:

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From archey3AUR:

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ArchWiki's birthday celebration:

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User art:

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by Cyllos

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by LnLcFlx

Code page 437 save (e.g. /etc/issue):

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by Hendrikto (modified from the version by LnLcFlx)

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by cmang

Cowsay

Here are some examples of cowsay and fortune used together:

Default cow with fortune

  • Combined with the program cowsay:
$ cowthink $(fortune)
 ________________________________________ 
( The best cure for insomnia is to get a )
( lot of sleep. -W.C. Fields             )
 ---------------------------------------- 
        o   ^__^
         o  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||

The ASCII images are generated by .cow text files located in /usr/share/cows, and all themes can be listed with the cowsay -l. These files can be edited to the user's liking; custom images can also be created from scratch or found on the net. The easiest way create a custom cow file is to use an existing one as a template. To test the custom file:

$ cowsay -f /path/to/file $(fortune)

Random cow with fortune

$ fortune -c | cowthink -f $(find /usr/share/cows -type f | shuf -n 1)
  ___________________________________________
( (computers) % A language that doesn't )
( affect the way you think about                  )
( programming is not worth knowing.       )
  ------------------------------------------------------
         o      (__)
          o     /oo|
           o   (_"_)*+++++++++*
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                   I[I|I | | | | |   I I `
                   I`I ' /  /  /  '  '     I I
                   I I                       I I
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                        Scowleton

Random custom cow with fortune

Complex commands can be chained to produce detailed ASCII art such as this Futurama example.

  • Display a random cow with a random facial expression and wrap long lines of fortune text:
Note: The randomly selected cow is actually a toad chosen from a database with custom ASCII art
$ fortune -a | fmt -80 -s | $(shuf -n 1 -e cowsay cowthink) -$(shuf -n 1 -e b d g p s t w y) -f $(shuf -n 1 -e $(cowsay -l | tail -n +2)) -n
    ________________________________________ 
( Fry: I must be a robot. Why else would )
( human women refuse to date me?         )
    -------------------------------------------------- 
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Ponysay

For full 256-colored cowsay-like art use ponysay (version 3.0 has 422 ponies). The syntax is the same, meaning ponysay message to say something and ponysay -l for a complete list of ponies. To select a pony to display, run ponysay --pony x "message", where x is a pony. To create more ponies use util-say-gitAUR and store them in ~/.local/share/ponysay/ponies and ~/.local/share/ponysay/ttyponies/ for desktop and TTY, respectively.

See also