[MacOS]Can not preview any images (png,jpg,jpeg,webp, ...) in iTerm2

[zhangyonglei]

Can not preview any images (png,jpg,jpeg,webp, ...) in iTerm2.

• MacOS 15.5
• imgcat/viu all are installed
• ~/.config/lf/lfrc file settings:

set ratios 1:2:3
set sixel true
set icons true

set previewer /Users/tianyu/.config/lf/preview.sh
set cleaner /Users/tianyu/.config/lf/cleaner.sh
set preview

• /Users/tianyu/.config/lf/preview.sh file content:

#!/bin/bash
case "$1" in
    *.jpg|*.jpeg|*.png|*.gif|*.bmp|*.webp)
        # tput init
        # tput cup "$4" "$5"
        # tput smcup
        # chafa  -f sixel  --size="$2x$3" -c 256 "$1" 2>>/tmp/lf_error.log
        # viu -w "$2" -h "$3" -x "$4" -y "$5" "$1" 2>>/tmp/lf_error.log
        viu -w "$2" -h "$3" "$1"
        # /Users/tianyu/.iterm2/imgcat --width "$2" --height "$3" "$1"
        # /Users/tianyu/.iterm2/imgcat -r -l --width "$2" --height "$3" "$1"
        # qlmanage -p "$1" > /dev/null 2>&1
        # tput rmcup
        ;;
    *)
        # 其他文件类型的默认预览
        bat --color=always --style=numbers --line-range=:500 "$1" 2>/dev/null || cat "$1"
        ;;
esac
exit 0

Tried all methods with viu and imgcat commands.

BTW, Running the two commands alone work well/correctly in iTerm2.

[zhangyonglei]

Not show image, but show the following content in iTerm2:

ESC]1337;File=inline=1;preserveAspectRatio=1;size=761597;width=105;height=56:/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQIA...

[CatsDeservePets]

I do get the same output on iTerm and Kitty. Might be related to viu as using the image protocols directly works for me.
I keep testing.

So I called viu with the exact same parameters in lf and outside lf:
viu -w 44 -h 32 -x 88 -y 1 <path>
It worked outside lf but not inside lf.

You seem to not be the only one having trouble using viu to get image preview in iTerm:

• Lf previewer doesn't show viu output #777

[zhangyonglei]

It works well when I wrote a new method "func (win *win) printImage(screen tcell.Screen, reg *reg)" to print the "viu" output to the iTerm2 window directly.
But there 2 bugs:

1. The image cannot be cleaned up when moving the cursor to a text file or dir/folder.
2. The image output can not be shrinked according to the width and height parameters.

Please view the following screenshots:

[CatsDeservePets]

I got it kinda working with chafa instead of viu, using the solution #1885 (comment) as base like this:

output=$(chafa -f iterm --animate=off -s "${2}x${3}" "$1")
printf "\e[%s;%sH" "$5" "$4" > /dev/tty
printf "%s" "$output" > /dev/tty

Still buggy and not cleaned. Maybe instead of using wrappers like chafa or viu we should try using iTerms imgcat directly.