nyi-fetch/README.md

nyi

an animated 3D fetch tool.

donut.c had a baby with neofetch. Your distro logo gets extruded into a solid, lit from an angle you pick, and spun in your terminal while the system info renders next to it.

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it runs where you run

Linux · desktop	Linux · laptop	macOS
Android · Termux	iOS · iSH / NewTerm	same binary, no runtime deps

what it does

• real 3D. the logo is extruded into a solid and shaded per-pixel from a configurable light direction — not a pre-rendered animation.
• native info. everything comes straight out of /proc, /sys, sysctl, DRM/EDID and your GTK config. no runtime dependencies.
• any logo. ships with its own pyramid, and borrows any logo fastfetch knows (nixos, arch, gentoo, debian, void, …) when it's installed. drop in your own ASCII art too.
• sub-cell shading. sextants (2×3) and blocks (2×2) modes for terminals that draw the Symbols for Legacy Computing block, or a plain ASCII ramp everywhere else.
• mobile aware. knows Termux (getprop, $PREFIX dpkg) and iSH.
• declarative. first-class Nix flake with NixOS and home-manager modules.

install

Nix (flake)

nix run github:elwrcl/nyi

Or add it to your flake inputs and pull in the module — see Nix modules below.

From source (any distro)

Needs Rust 1.74 or newer.

git clone https://github.com/elwrcl/nyi
cd nyi
make
sudo make install          # installs to /usr/local/bin

PREFIX and DESTDIR work the way you'd expect:

make install PREFIX="$HOME/.local"

Fedora / RHEL / openSUSE (rpm)

rpmbuild -ba nyi.spec

The spec pulls the main tarball and builds with make. Note that cargo needs network access to fetch libc — vendor it first if you're building in a sandbox like OBS or Koji.

Android (Termux)

pkg install rust make git
git clone https://github.com/elwrcl/nyi && cd nyi
make && make install PREFIX="$PREFIX"

iOS (iSH)

iSH emulates a 486-class x86 with no SSE, so the usual i686 build traps on its first floating-point instruction. Cross-compile for i586 instead — the result is a static musl binary with nothing to install alongside it:

make ish          # -> dist/nyi-ish, 636K, statically linked i386

Put it in iCloud Drive, then in iSH:

mkdir -p /mnt/icloud
mount -t ios . /mnt/icloud      # pick the folder in the iOS file picker
install -m 755 /mnt/icloud/nyi-ish /usr/local/bin/nyi
nyi --frames 60

Everything is emulated, so keep --frames modest. a-Shell can't run this — it's not an emulator, and iOS won't execute a downloaded ELF.

usage

nyi                        # spin the detected distro logo next to your info
nyi -l nixos               # borrow a fastfetch logo
nyi --infinite --speed 2   # run until you hit a key
nyi --no-info --size 2     # just the shape, twice as big

flag	what it does
-l, --logo <name>	use a logo by name. triangle (aka pyramid, nyi) is built in; anything fastfetch --list-logos prints also works
--rotate-x / --rotate-y	lock rotation to one axis
-s, --speed <float>	rotation speed multiplier (default 1.0)
--size <float>	logo scale, 0.5–5.0
--depth <float>	extrusion depth, 0.1–10.0. unset, it's derived from the logo's character variance so flat art doesn't look paper-thin
--height <n>	render height in rows. unset, it matches the info block
--no-info	logo only
--no-color	drop the logo coloring
--frames <n>	stop after n frames (default 2000)
--infinite	run forever — any key or Ctrl-C exits
--shading-mode <mode>	ascii (default), blocks (2×2) or sextants (2×3)
--shading-chars <str>	custom ramp, dimmest first. UTF-8 is fine
--box	draw a border around the info block
--config <path>	use this config instead of the default
--dump-logo <name>	print a logo in logo.txt form, taken from fastfetch
--fetch-logo <name>	the same, downloaded — for machines without fastfetch
-V, --version · -h, --help	version / help

Sub-cell modes need a terminal that renders the Symbols for Legacy Computing block — kitty, Ghostty, foot and NewTerm all do.

configuration

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/nyi/config, defaulting to ~/.config/nyi/config.

List the field names you want, one per line, in display order. Delete or comment out a line to hide that field. Settings go in the same file as key=value and are order-independent.

# fields, in the order they're drawn
os
kernel
uptime
packages
shell
wm
terminal
cpu
gpu
memory
disk
colors

# an extra mount point beyond / (repeatable, up to 8)
disk=/home

# settings
label_color=magenta        # red green yellow blue magenta cyan white, or "38;5;213"
separator=-                # repeated under the user@host title; "" leaves it blank
box=0
shading_mode=sextants
logo_outer=magenta         # extruded sides
logo_inner=white           # front and back faces
light=top-left             # top-left top-right top left right front bottom-left bottom-right
spin=xy                    # x, y or xy
speed=1.0
size=1.0
depth=1.0
height=20

all available fields

os host kernel uptime packages shell display wm theme icons font cursor terminal cpu gpu memory swap disk ip battery locale colors

borrowing a logo without fastfetch

fastfetch keeps its ~500 logos as string literals compiled into a 3.2 MB binary. nyi doesn't carry them, and it doesn't reach for the network while it draws either — a fetch tool that blocks your shell on a DNS lookup is a broken fetch tool. Instead you export a logo once, and it becomes an ordinary logo.txt:

# on a machine that has fastfetch
nyi --dump-logo apple > ~/.config/nyi/logo.txt

# on one that can't run it — iSH, a lean Termux, a container
nyi --fetch-logo apple > ~/.config/nyi/logo.txt

--fetch-logo pulls a single text file from logos/ over curl or wget. It is the only thing in nyi that opens a socket, it only runs when you name it on the command line, and it shells out rather than linking a TLS stack — one libc dependency is why the binary is 600 KB. Point it somewhere else with NYI_LOGO_URL if you'd rather host your own.

The logos/ directory is generated, not maintained by hand:

make && ./tools/dump-logos.sh

your own logo

Drop ASCII or Unicode art in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/nyi/logo.txt. Denser characters (@, M, #) come out taller in the relief, sparse ones (., ,) stay low — the art doubles as a heightmap. ANSI colors in the file are preserved; without them, logo_outer / logo_inner decide the palette.

An optional first line picks a distro's color scheme:

# distro: nixos

Nix modules

{
  inputs.nyi.url = "github:elwrcl/nyi";
}

Then, in a NixOS or home-manager configuration:

{
  imports = [ inputs.nyi.nixosModules.default ];    # or homeManagerModules.default

  programs.nyi = {
    enable = true;
    info = [ "os" "kernel" "uptime" "cpu" "memory" "colors" ];
    labelColor = "38;5;213";
    shadingMode = "sextants";
    light = "top-left";
    spin = "xy";
    disks = [ "/home" ];
  };
}

Every option is documented in nix/settings.nix. Anything the module doesn't cover yet goes through extraConfig, which is appended to the generated config verbatim. There's an overlay at overlays.default if you just want the package.

building

nix develop        # cargo, rustc, clippy, rustfmt, rust-analyzer, fastfetch

make               # release build, copied to ./nyi
make check         # --version and a one-frame smoke test
cargo test         # unit tests
cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings
cargo fmt --check

The build stamps a codename into --version via NYI_CODENAME; the Makefile and the Nix package both pass nyiotxa.

license

ISC © elwrcl