remage/

remage aims for nsxiv's feature set with vim-style control and a Nothing OS look. It draws with the GPU, so zooming, panning and scrolling stay smooth, and it uses no CPU at all while the picture stands still. It can take its colours from your wallpaper through matugen or pywal, and you script it with plain shell commands and an IPC socket.

Thumbnail grid with marks	: command palette

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Features

• Fast. The first image is on screen in about 90 ms. Neighbours are decoded and uploaded ahead of time, so n and p take a single frame. Rendering happens only on demand.
• Keyboard first. Vim key notation, sequences (gg, <Space>w) and counts (5n, 12G). Every feature is an action you can bind, run from the : palette or send over IPC. Which-key shows what a pending prefix can do, and ? lists the live keymap.
• Thumbnail grid. Shares the freedesktop thumbnail cache with your file manager, so thumbnails are often there already. Visual mode marks ranges.
• Many formats. JPEG, PNG/APNG, GIF, WebP, JPEG XL, AVIF, HEIC, SVG, TIFF (multi-page), camera RAW, OpenEXR/HDR and more. Animations play with their own timing. ICC colour profiles and EXIF orientation are applied, and images larger than the GPU's texture limit are tiled. Anything else can go through an external decoder such as ImageMagick.
• Scripting. User commands replace nsxiv's key-handler: placeholders, marks as targets, inline confirmation and output fed back as actions. An old key-handler works unchanged.
• IPC. remage msg next, remage msg --query marked and remage msg --subscribe image from Hyprland binds or scripts.
• Themeable. Three colours are enough, and the rest are derived. matugen and pywal recolour open windows live when the wallpaper changes.
• Configurable. One TOML file with live reload, file:line:col errors and "did you mean" suggestions.

Install

Arch Linux

A remage-git PKGBUILD lives in contrib/PKGBUILD:

git clone https://github.com/krolyxon/remage
cd remage/contrib
makepkg -si

It installs the binary, the man page, zsh/bash/fish completions and a desktop file.

From source

You need stable Rust (1.96 or newer). AVIF and HEIC use two system libraries:

sudo pacman -S dav1d libheif                  # Arch
sudo apt install libdav1d-dev libheif-dev     # Debian/Ubuntu (libheif ≥ 1.17)

cargo install --locked --git https://github.com/krolyxon/remage

Without those libraries, build with the pure-Rust formats only:

cargo install --locked --git https://github.com/krolyxon/remage --no-default-features --features jxl,svg,raw

Shell completions and the man page are generated by the binary:

remage completions zsh > ~/.local/share/zsh/site-functions/_remage   # also bash, fish, elvish
remage man > ~/.local/share/man/man1/remage.1

Usage

remage                      # the current directory
remage photo.jpg            # photo.jpg and the rest of its directory
remage -rt ~/Pictures       # a whole tree, starting in the grid
remage -S=3 wallpapers/     # slideshow, 3 seconds per image
find . -name '*.png' | remage -i -o > picked.txt   # pick images, print the marked ones on exit
remage --dump-config        # the complete commented default config

remage --help lists every option, and man remage covers keys, actions and IPC.

Keys

The defaults below can all be changed. ? shows the live keymap inside remage.

	Keys
Everywhere	n/p next/previous · [/] ±10 · gg/G/12G first/last/goto · <CR> image ⇄ grid · m mark · M invert marks · u unmark all · N/P next/previous mark · f fullscreen · b status bar · i info · s slideshow · r reload · D remove from queue · : palette · / search · ? help · q quit
Image	hjkl pan · HJKL jump to edge · +/-/= zoom in/out/100% · w/W/e/E fit/fill/width/height · z centre · </> rotate · |/_ flip · a pixel filter · A transparency background · {/} gamma · <C-Space> play/pause · <C-n>/<C-p> frames · wheel zooms at the cursor, drag pans
Grid	hjkl move · <C-d>/<C-u> half page · <C-f>/<C-b> page · 0/$ row start/end · +/- thumbnail size · v visual mode, then m to mark the range · click selects, double-click opens

Configuration

remage reads ~/.config/remage/config.toml. The file is merged over the built-in defaults, so put in only what you change. Edits apply as soon as you save, and remage --check-config validates the file. contrib/config.example.toml is a good start.

[image]
fit = "down"                 # down | fit | fill | width | height | original
alpha_background = "dots"    # dots | checker | solid

[grid]
size = 160

[keys.image]
"<C-ScrollUp>" = "next"
"D" = "none"                 # remove a default binding

Commands

Commands run asynchronously and act on the marked files, or on the current one when nothing is marked. Bind them as run <name>; unbound ones still show up in the : palette.

[commands.delete]
desc    = "Delete files"
run     = ["rm", "--", "{files}"]          # array: run directly, {files} becomes one arg per file
confirm = "Delete {count} file(s)?"        # asks inline in the status bar: y / n

[commands.copy]
desc = "Copy image"
run  = "wl-copy --type image/png < {file}" # string: run through sh, placeholders are quoted

[commands.legacy]                          # an nsxiv key-handler works as it is
run   = ["~/.config/nsxiv/exec/key-handler", "w"]
stdin = "files"

[keys.global]
"<Space>d" = "run delete"
"<Space>c" = "run copy"

After a command succeeds, remage re-checks the files it touched by default. Deleted files leave the queue and edited ones are decoded again, so delete and rotate scripts need no extra setup. With output = "actions", each line the command prints runs as an action.

Theming

nothing-dark (the default) and nothing-light are built in. Any theme needs only background, foreground and accent; the other tokens are derived.

• matugen: copy contrib/matugen/remage.toml into your matugen templates (the file says how), then add include = ["~/.cache/matugen/remage.toml"] to your config. Every wallpaper change recolours open windows.
• pywal: set [theme] pywal = "~/.cache/wal/colors.json".

Scripting over IPC

Each instance listens on $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/remage/<pid>.sock and speaks newline-delimited JSON. remage msg talks to the newest instance (or $REMAGE_SOCKET, or --pid).

remage msg next 5                     # any action
remage msg --query marked             # current | marked | queue | state
remage msg --subscribe image          # one JSON line per change

# Hyprland
bind = SUPER, bracketright, exec, remage msg next

Formats

Format	Through
JPEG, PNG/APNG, GIF, WebP, BMP, ICO, TIFF, TGA, PNM, QOI, DDS, HDR, OpenEXR	image
JPEG XL	jxl-oxide
AVIF	dav1d (system library)
HEIC / HEIF	libheif (system library)
SVG / SVGZ	resvg, re-rendered sharp at every zoom level
Camera RAW (CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, DNG, RAF, ORF, RW2 …)	rawler, embedded preview first
Anything else	[[decoders]], e.g. magick "{file}[0]" png:- for PSD and XCF

Development

cargo run --release -- ~/Pictures
cargo fmt --check && cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings && cargo test
RUST_LOG=remage=debug cargo run --release   # startup and first-frame timings
REMAGE_SNAPSHOT=/tmp/x.png remage …          # also write each settled frame to a PNG

tests/fixtures/make.sh regenerates the decoder fixtures.

License

remage is licensed under the GNU AGPL v3. The embedded fonts (Space Grotesk, Space Mono and Doto) are under the SIL Open Font License.