Installation

Recommended: shell installer

Linux and macOS can install the latest release directly from GitHub:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DanielHauge/h5v/main/install.sh | sh

The shell installer also works in Git Bash, MSYS2, and Cygwin on Windows. It prefers conventional install locations: /usr/local/bin when writable, ~/.local/bin on Unix-like systems without a writable system prefix, and %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\h5v\bin on Windows shells.

Options:

install.sh --version VERSION --install-dir PATH --repo OWNER/REPO --dry-run

Other install paths

PowerShell

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DanielHauge/h5v/main/install.ps1 | iex

Homebrew

brew tap DanielHauge/h5v https://github.com/DanielHauge/h5v.git
brew install h5v

Scoop

scoop bucket add h5v https://github.com/DanielHauge/h5v
scoop install h5v/h5v

Prebuilt binaries with cargo-binstall

cargo binstall h5v

Build from source

cargo install h5v

On Linux, source builds may require native packages such as cmake, pkg-config, libfontconfig, freetype, and expat development headers.

Terminal graphics

h5v works in plain terminals, but image and chart previews look best with a real graphics protocol such as Kitty.

Links:

Kitty graphics protocol: https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/graphics-protocol/
ratatui-image: https://github.com/ratatui/ratatui-image
terminal support gallery: https://benjajaja.github.io/ratatui-image-screenshots/

If graphics probing causes trouble:

h5v --no-terminal-graphics path/to/file.h5

That disables graphics probing and uses the safer text-only path.

Compatibility mode

If your terminal also struggles with icons or line drawing:

h5v --compatibility path/to/file.h5

This switches to simpler symbols and disables terminal graphics probing.

You can also enable it with H5V_COMPATIBILITY_MODE or h5v.compatibility = true.

H5V_COMPATIBILITY_MODE=true h5v path/to/file.h5
H5V_COMPATIBILITY_MODE=off h5v path/to/file.h5

Precedence:

--compatibility
h5v.compatibility
H5V_COMPATIBILITY_MODE
default false

For config details, see Configuration and theming. For display problems, see Troubleshooting and limits.

To make the environment variable permanent:

# ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc
export H5V_COMPATIBILITY_MODE=true

# ~/.config/fish/config.fish
set -gx H5V_COMPATIBILITY_MODE true

Invalid values are rejected.

Write mode

h5v opens files read-only unless you pass -w:

h5v -w path/to/file.h5

Without -w, edit actions report that the file must be reopened in write mode.

h5v documentation