🎨 Beautiful images of your code — from right inside your terminal.
Table of Contents
Description
carbon-now-cli brings the power of Carbon directly to your terminal. ⚡️
Generate beautiful images of your code with a single command.
Want to customize everything before generating the image? Run it in --interactive mode. 💅
Features
- 🖼 Downloads the real, high-quality image (no DOM screenshots)
- ✨ Detects file type automatically
- 🗂 Supports all languages & covers extra ground
- ⚡️ Interactive mode via
--interactive - 🎒 Presets via
--presetto save and re-use your favorite settings - 🖱 Selective processing via
--startand--end - 📎 Copies image to clipboard via
--to-clipboard(cross-OS 😱) - 📚 Accepts file,
stdin, or clipboard content as input - 🖋️ Supports custom theme colors
- 🥞 Supports concurrency for easier batch processing
- 👀 Saves to given location or opens in browser for manual finish
- 🐶 Displays image directly in supported terminals
- 🌈 Supports different export types (
png,svg) - 📏 Supports different resolutions (
1x,2x,4x) - ⏱ Reports each step and therefore shortens the wait
- ✅ Heavily tested
- ⛏ Actively maintained
- 🧺 …and more!
Installation
Bun
bun i -g carbon-now-cli
pnpm
pnpm i -g carbon-now-cli
npx
npx carbon-now-cli <file>
npm
npm i -g carbon-now-cli
yarn
yarn global add carbon-now-cli
Requirements
Usage
Beautiful images of your code — from right inside your terminal.
Usage
$ carbon-now <file>
$ pbpaste | carbon-now
$ carbon-now --from-clipboard
Options
--start, -s Starting line of input
--end, -e Ending line of input
--interactive, -i Interactive mode
--preset, -p Apply an existing preset
--save-to Image save location, default: cwd
--save-as Image name without extension, default: original-hash
--from-clipboard Read input from clipboard instead of file
--to-clipboard Copy image to clipboard instead of saving
--open-in-browser Open in browser instead of saving
--config Use a different, local config (read-only)
--settings Override specific settings for this run
--disable-headless Run Playwright in headful mode
--engine Use different rendering engine, default: `chromium`
Options: `chromium`, `firefox`, `webkit`
--skip-display Don’t display the image in the terminal
Examples
See: https://github.com/mixn/carbon-now-cli#examples
Presets
Creating a Preset
Running the carbon-now command generates a ~/.carbon-now.json config file.
Presets are stored in this file and consist of available settings. You can create presets either manually or automatically via the --interactive flag. When prompted, answer the following:
For example, naming the preset presentation will add it to ~/.carbon-now.json like this:
{
"latest-preset": {
// Equal to `presentation` below
},
"presentation": {
"theme": "base16-light",
"backgroundColor": "white",
"windowTheme": "none",
"windowControls": true,
"fontFamily": "Space Mono",
"fontSize": "18px",
"lineNumbers": false,
"firstLineNumber": 1,
"selectedLines": "*",
"dropShadow": false,
"dropShadowOffsetY": "20px",
"dropShadowBlurRadius": "68px",
"widthAdjustment": true,
"width": "20000px",
"lineHeight": "140%",
"paddingVertical": "35px",
"paddingHorizontal": "35px",
"squaredImage": false,
"watermark": false,
"exportSize": "2x",
"type": "png"
}
}
latest-preset will be overwritten after each run, while presentation remains until manually deleted.
Using a saved preset
To use a saved preset, simply run:
carbon-now _unfold.js --preset <name-of-preset>
If the preset or ~/.carbon-now.json does not exist, carbon-now-cli will fall back to the default settings and be smart about the rest.
Result:
Settings
interface CarbonCLIPresetInterface {
backgroundColor: string;
dropShadow: boolean;
dropShadowBlurRadius: string;
dropShadowOffsetY: string;
exportSize: '1x' | '2x' | '4x';
firstLineNumber: number;
fontFamily: CarbonFontFamilyType;
fontSize: string;
lineHeight: string;
lineNumbers: boolean;
paddingHorizontal: string;
paddingVertical: string;
selectedLines: string; // All: "*"; Lines 3-6: "3,4,5,6", etc.
squaredImage: boolean;
theme: CarbonThemeType;
type: 'png' | 'svg';
watermark: boolean;
widthAdjustment: boolean;
windowControls: boolean;
windowTheme: 'none' | 'sharp' | 'bw';
custom?: CarbonThemeHighlightsInterface;
width?: string;
// Below are detected automatically, and not persisted as keys
language?: string;
titleBar?: string;
}
Also see CarbonFontFamilyType, CarbonThemeType & CarbonThemeHighlightsInterface
Re-using settings
It just works. ™
carbon-now automatically reuses settings from previous runs, so you don’t need to worry about manually reconfiguring them.
Custom theme colors
From v2.0, carbon-now-cli supports custom theme colors for detailed styling. Define a custom key inside a preset that complies to the following type:
interface CarbonThemeHighlightsInterface {
background?: string;
text?: string;
variable?: string;
variable2?: string;
variable3?: string;
attribute?: string;
definition?: string;
keyword?: string;
operator?: string;
property?: string;
number?: string;
string?: string;
comment?: string;
meta?: string;
tag?: string;
}
Example ~/.carbon-now.json with custom theme colors:
{
"hacker": {
"backgroundColor": "rgba(0, 255, 0, 1)",
"windowTheme": "bw",
"windowControls": true,
"fontFamily": "Anonymous Pro",
"fontSize": "18px",
"lineNumbers": false,
"firstLineNumber": 1,
"dropShadow": false,
"selectedLines": "*",
"dropShadowOffsetY": "20px",
"dropShadowBlurRadius": "68px",
"widthAdjustment": true,
"lineHeight": "133%",
"paddingVertical": "30px",
"paddingHorizontal": "30px",
"squaredImage": false,
"watermark": false,
"exportSize": "2x",
"type": "png",
"custom": {
"background": "rgba(0, 0, 0, 1)",
"text": "rgba(0, 255