A small and fast, yet decidedly over-engineered command-line and interactive viewer for SVT Text-TV, Swedish Television's public-service teletext. The UI might feel like it's 1979 calling, but it's still a properly excellent source of news. Now available in a terminal near you.
texttv is written entirely in Rust and runs on most platforms
(macOS, Windows, Linux, etc.) in most terminal emulators (such as iTerm2, Ghostty, Terminal.app, Windows Terminal, GNOME Terminal, Konsole, Foot, Terminator, Kitty, WezTerm, Alacritty, Tabby, and others). Hope all is well with Felicia!
Make sure you have the latest version of Rust installed. Use Rustup rather than your package manager to install, as this ensures you'll get the latest version.
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | shThen clone the repo and install:
git clone https://github.com/dfallman/texttv
cd texttv
cargo install --path .texttv is simple to use out of the box and doesn't require any particular configuration
in most terminals to get started.
The app has two different modes, interactive mode (where you browse the pages) and single page view (where you output a single page to the terminal).
This opens a Text-TV browser in the terminal and allows you to navigate the teletext pages using familiar inputs. Type the page number to go to that page, use your arrow keys left and right to go to next/previous page, use up and down to select links on the page, and enter to select. Press Esc to quit.
Use the commands texttv or texttv --interactive.
Interactive mode
Outputs a single page to the terminal. Type texttv 360 to view page 360, for example (I wonder how those Birch Leaves are going, heard they did well this season!) How the single page is rendered depends on your terminal emulator's capabilities and your settings (see below).
texttv has two different ways to render a page. The right one for your
terminal defaults automatically, but you can always override it.
Both render types have their pros and cons, pick the one you like the most:
- Teletext mode (the default and fallback option) reconstructs the original 40-column page as real terminal text: the 8 teletext colors as ANSI truecolor, bold double-height headings, Unicode sextants for the mosaic block-characters (the SVT logo, sport icons, weather symbols, navigation borders). The benefit here is that the text you see is real text: copyable, grep-able, and feels right at home in the terminal. The downside is that we lose some minor details on the page, most notably the double-height characters that most terminal emulators can't render in a predictable fashion (see note below).
Teletext mode: pages are rendered as text
- Image mode, on the other hand, asks your terminal to draw the original page GIF that SVT
itself serves. Here, you'll get pixel-perfect rendering, but you lose selectable text.
This is the default pick for terminals with a native graphics protocol (Kitty,
Ghostty, WezTerm, iTerm2). On other terminal emulators, you can try it via
--mode auto. On half-block-only terminals (these include Apple Terminal, Alacritty, Windows Terminal, and others) image mode falls back to a Unicode-half-block rendering, which is considerably worse than the teletext text path. Unless you have a very large terminal window, it'll look quite blurry (still pretty cool though!) So for these terminals, the default is--mode teletext.
Image mode: pages are rendered as images in supported terminals
Pick your mode explicitly with --mode:
texttv 300 --mode teletext # force the text render
texttv 300 --mode auto # render the GIF via whichever graphics protocol your terminal supports
texttv 300 --mode kitty # force Kitty graphics protocol
texttv 300 --mode iterm # force iTerm2 inline-image protocol
texttv 300 --mode blocks # force the half-block fallbackPro tip: if you prefer a rendering mode or a size that isn't the default for your terminal emulator, consider creating a configuration file (see below). That way your preferred settings will load automatically and you'll only have to type texttv <PAGE>.
Teletext's headline rows are double-height, where each character is one column
wide but two rows tall. SVT Text-TV tends to frequently use double-height characters for headings, typically on page 100.
The terminal equivalent is called DECDHL (DEC Double-Height
Line), a VT100-era escape sequence that does exactly the same thing.
In theory texttv could emit DECDHL and let your terminal handle it. In practice
though, support is a mess at best: xterm, Kitty, WezTerm, and Konsole render it correctly (more or less);
Apple Terminal, Alacritty, Windows Terminal, and Ghostty either ignore it,
half-render it, or break in interesting ways around scrolling and cursor
positioning. Many emulators also disagree about how copy-paste, resize, and reflow should behave.
Rather than ship a feature that looks good on a third of terminals and
visibly broken on the rest, texttv renders headlines at normal height in
teletext mode. You still get the bold weight and the color, just not the
2x vertical. Image mode preserves them faithfully however. Optional support for DECDHL might be added in future releases.
texttv is easy to use out of the box but also highly configurable, so the above is only the basic operation. Here are some
examples of a few typical options (see below for details):
texttv
The first example starts texttv in interactive mode, which allows you to navigate through pages using number input, arrow keys, and Enter to select, Esc to quit.
texttv 300 --mode teletext
The second example shows page 300 but overrides the default rendering mode (see below) to teletext mode, which draws the page as text+ANSI.
texttv 101 --mode iterm --size small --source svt --verbose
The third example enforces iTerm2's default rendering mode (image), outputs it in small size, enforces the source to be SVT, and shows verbose logging output in the console.
texttv <PAGE> [options]
| Flag | Meaning |
|---|---|
<PAGE> |
The page number between 100 and 999 |
--mode {teletext,auto,kitty,iterm,blocks} |
Rendering path. Default depends on your terminal (see the matrix below). |
--size {tiny,small,medium,large,xl,full} |
Width for image modes. Default medium (60 cells). Ignored in teletext mode. |
--source {texttv-nu,svt} |
Data source. Defaults to texttv-nu for teletext (it exposes the color attributes we need to reconstruct the page), svt for image modes. |
--no-color |
Strip ANSI color and the right-edge frame. Plain mono. |
--no-padding |
Drop the blank rows above and below the page. (Padding is on by default.) |
--list |
Print the named-section index and exit. |
--debug-protocol |
Echo the detected graphics protocol on stderr before drawing. |
--verbose / -v |
Per-phase timing traces on stderr. Also enabled by TEXTTV_TIMINGS=1. |
--help / --version |
Standard. |
| value | cells |
|---|---|
tiny |
30 |
small |
45 |
medium |
60 (default) |
large |
90 |
xl |
120 |
full |
terminal width, capped at 4000 |
Defaults vary by terminal. You can always override with --mode. Note however that your terminal can only draw what it can draw, so even if you override the image-mode protocol with something your terminal can't handle, the fallback will be shown (usually half-blocks). If this happens, --mode teletext is the safest option.
| Terminal | Default | Image-mode protocol |
|---|---|---|
| Kitty | image | Kitty graphics (true pixels) |
| Ghostty | image | Kitty graphics (true pixels) |
| WezTerm | image | iTerm2 inline (true pixels) |
| iTerm2 | image | iTerm2 inline (true pixels) |
| Apple Terminal | teletext | half-blocks fallback |
| Alacritty | teletext | half-blocks fallback |
| Windows Terminal | teletext | half-blocks fallback |
| foot / mlterm | teletext | half-blocks fallback (Sixel is on the roadmap) |
texttv 300 --debug-protocol reports the detected protocol on stderr if
you're curious.
Kitty's graphics protocol needs tmux passthrough:
set -g allow-passthrough on
set -g default-terminal "tmux-256color"
If --debug-protocol says halfblocks inside tmux but your outer terminal
is Kitty / Ghostty / WezTerm, this is almost certainly why. Teletext mode is
unaffected.
When stdout is piped or redirected, ANSI escapes are stripped automatically
— so texttv 300 | grep and texttv 300 > page.txt produce clean text.
NO_COLOR=1 and --no-color do the same explicitly. Image mode is replaced
by teletext mode when the output isn't a TTY (you don't want raw image-
protocol escape codes ending up in a pipe).
Running texttv with no arguments — or with -i / --interactive — opens
an in-terminal page browser starting at page 100. Pass an explicit page to
start elsewhere, e.g. texttv -i 300.
The input field sits in the top-left, overlaying the page's own
header. It shows a triangle pointer (⏵) when idle and a braille spinner
during loads, followed by the current page number. Type three digits to
jump to a page — no Enter required, the page loads as soon as the third
digit lands. Partial input shows as middle-dot placeholders (3··).
Backspace removes the last typed digit. Out-of-range pages (000–099)
flash an error in the hint bar.
Links are three-digit page references found on the rendered page. The detector is permissive on purpose:
" 300 "— the bare case." 328f "—fis the multi-page suffix; the link targets 328." 376- "— trailing dash (range start with no upper bound)." 343-344 "— range; both numbers become links."100.000"is not a link (digits adjacent to a.).
When the cursor is on a link the three digits are highlighted in white-on-magenta. Press Enter or Space to follow it.
Multi-page pages (the XXXf indicator) carry multiple subpages.
The bottom bar replaces the standard hint with a subpage selector:
Page: >1< 2 3 4 … with >active< marking the currently rendered
subpage. When the cursor is parked on a subpage selector, ←/→ cycle
through the subpages instead of stepping page numbers.
Keys:
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
0–9 |
Type a page number (3 digits → load immediately) |
| Backspace | Remove last typed digit |
↑ ↓ |
Move between input field, links, and subpage selectors |
← → |
Page ±1 (or cycle subpages when on a subpage selector) |
| Enter / Space | Follow the selected link, or switch subpage |
q / Esc |
Quit |
A freshly-loaded page has no active link until you press an arrow key.
The input field is reachable via ↑ from the topmost page link.
Interactive mode always uses teletext rendering — image modes are not
compatible with link scanning. --mode and --source flags are ignored
(with a one-line stderr warning) if passed alongside -i. If a page
doesn't exist, a centered "Sidan finns inte" placeholder renders in
place of content and ←/→ keep working so you can step past gaps in
SVT's numbering. The terminal must be at least 41 columns × 26 rows.
Optional. Read from $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/texttv/config.yaml (defaults to
~/.config/texttv/config.yaml). CLI flags always win; missing keys fall back
to built-in defaults; unknown keys are an error.
# All fields optional. Lines below show the built-in defaults.
# mode: teletext # teletext | auto | kitty | iterm | blocks
# (terminal-dependent default, see matrix)
# size: medium # tiny | small | medium | large | xl | full
# source: texttv-nu # texttv-nu | svt
# no_color: false # also honoured: NO_COLOR=1 env, piped stdout
# padding: true # blank row above and below the page
# verbose: false # per-phase timing traces on stderr| code | meaning |
|---|---|
0 |
success |
1 |
bad arguments / page out of range |
2 |
network error, parse error, or "page not available" |
api.texttv.nu— community-run JSON proxy that preserves per-cell color attributes. The teletext mode depends on this; the official SVT pages strip the color information. We identify ourselves asapp=texttvcliv<version>per their policy.svt.se/text-tv/<PAGE>— the official page, used for the embedded GIF when an image mode is active.
Decoded mosaic patterns persist to the OS cache directory under
texttv/mosaics/ (Linux: $XDG_CACHE_HOME/... or ~/.cache/...; macOS:
~/Library/Caches/...; Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\...) so a given pattern is
fetched once across all runs.
This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by SVT or
texttv.nu. It's an independent reader for publicly broadcast teletext data.
Please respect the upstream terms of service when using it — keep your
requests reasonable, don't strip the User-Agent or the app= parameter, and
don't use this tool or any part of this tool to overload either service.
Obvious perhaps, but SVT Text-TV is in Swedish. While a built-in translation engine is out of scope for this application, there are ways around this if you don't speak Swedish but are keen to read what's happening:
-
Learn Swedish. It's not the easiest language to learn, to be honest, but there are many online resources available.
-
Pipe the output of
texttvinto a translation engine or LLM, or you can use terminal-based translation engines such as translate-shell. With it installed, pipe the output oftexttvinto the translation engine:
texttv 100 | trans -b sv:en
It's not going to be perfect, but you'll get the gist of it.
The author of this application has been writing code for over 30 years. Lately, LLM agent-enhanced coding practices have rekindled my sense of awe at what's possible. This project has been built using a range of tools, including Anthropic's Claude Code (using Opus 4.7), dan, and vscode.
Unlike some who dismiss anything touched by a coding agent as "slop," I don't see it that way. To me, these tools are a way to move much faster, explore many more ideas, and test those ideas and implementations more rigorously than I ever could on my own.
MIT