When was the last time you used the terminal on your computer? Unless you’re a programmer, or you’re just obsessed with the Terminal like I am, chances are you’ve not even launched that thing on your PC or Mac.
So let me give you a reason to do that right now.
Reddit user u/ghostreport has created an Instagram client for the terminal for “just pure fun,” he says. The client uses Python 3 to work and is actually a pretty simple to run script, although I’ll make no comments about how difficult it might have been to actually write the script. Hats off to ghostreport for that.
Naturally, when I came across this, it piqued my interest, so yeah, I installed it and tried it out.
What makes the Instagram terminal client fun (at least for a while) is that it renders your Instagram posts in full ASCII… which means you’ll struggle to make sense of the photos most of the time, but they can also look insanely awesome at times.
Plus, if ASCII is not your thing, you can also use the “–color” flag while invoking the script to render images in large coloured blocks that basically look like very low-res versions of the images, as if we’re back in the age of dial-ups (or a BSNL network in the current day and age, for that matter).
If you’re interested in checking it out for yourself, you can go check it out on GitHub; just don’t forget to give him a star for it, he deserves it for sure.
Installation instructions are all available on the GitHub readme for the project, and it uses PIP for installation (which you’d already have if you’re using a Mac) and works with a simple ‘python3 start.py’ command. No biggie.
