Boron is a terminal screenshot generator

Paste real terminal output, or type it, and Boron keeps the ANSI colors, lets you edit the result like a document, and exports it as a PNG, SVG, JPEG or WebP. It runs in the browser and it is free. There is no upload: parsing and rendering happen on your machine.

Everything Boron draws can exist in a real terminal. The palette is chalk's sixteen colors, the modifiers are chalk's modifiers, and the automatic styling is expressed as chalk marks rather than hand-picked hex, so the picture you compose and the escape sequence you copy out are the same thing. Mock up what you want a program to print, then hand the ANSI or the chalk snippet to whoever is writing it.

What it does

• Keeps the colors of pasted output. ANSI escape codes are parsed in full, including 256-color and truecolor, and rich text is read from the clipboard of the terminals that write it.
• Edits like a document. Select any run and recolor it, or type your own. Colors are chalk's sixteen names rather than hex values, so switching theme re-maps them.
• Selects a rectangle, not a run. Terminal output is a grid, so the thing to restyle is often vertical: one column of a table, the tree gutter, the timestamps down the left. Hold Alt (⌥ on a Mac) and drag to select exactly those cells on every row.
• Renders command lines bright and output dim. A line opening with $, ❯, a bare > or oh-my-zsh's ➜ is treated as a command.
• Eight themes. Boron, VS Code Dark+, Dracula, Tokyo Night, Catppuccin Mocha, Nord, One Dark and Solarized Dark, each with a matching set of backdrops.
• Exports PNG, SVG, JPEG or WebP, or copies the image straight to the clipboard. The SVG embeds the fonts it uses, so it renders the same everywhere.
• Copies the text back out as raw ANSI, a runnable chalk snippet, or plain text.
• Shares as a link. The whole document and its settings travel in the URL, so a link opens the same picture for whoever receives it.

How to take a terminal screenshot with the colors kept

1. Copy the output in your terminal. Most terminals that write rich text do it on an ordinary copy; the table below says which need a setting or a different shortcut. Any terminal can also put the raw escape codes on the clipboard, for example git log --color=always | pbcopy.
2. Paste it into the editor. Escape codes and rich text are both read, and the colors map onto the active theme.
3. Pick a theme and a backdrop, set the width in columns, and add a title bar if you want one.
4. Save it as an image, copy it to the clipboard, or copy a link to the document.

Which terminals copy their colors

A terminal that copies rich text hands Boron the colors directly. One that copies plain text still works if the escape codes are in the text, which is what piping a command through pbcopy or xclip gives you.

Terminal	Colors on copy	How
Ghostty	Yes, by default
macOS Terminal.app	Yes, by default
VS Code, Cursor (editor)	Yes, by default
VS Code, Cursor (terminal)	Not on an ordinary copy	"Copy Selection as HTML" in the terminal's menu
iTerm2	Not on an ordinary copy	⌘⌥C, or turn on "copy with styles by default"
Konsole	Yes, by default
Tabby	Yes, by default
GNOME Terminal, Ptyxis	Not on an ordinary copy	"Copy as HTML" in the context menu
Windows Terminal	Off by default	Turn on copyFormatting in the settings
ConEmu	Off by default	Turn on CTS.HtmlFormat
PuTTY	Off by default	Turn on RTF copy in the selection settings
kitty	Escape codes in plain text	Bind copy_ansi_to_clipboard
Alacritty, WezTerm, Rio, xterm, Hyper, Zed, JetBrains, tmux, screen	Plain text only	Pipe the command's output to the clipboard instead

Questions

How is this different from carbon.now.sh or ray.so?

Those tools syntax-highlight source code by language. Boron reads the ANSI escape codes a program printed, so a screenshot of a dev server, a test run or a colored ls looks the way the terminal showed it.

Can I convert ANSI output to SVG?

Yes. Paste the output and save as SVG. The file embeds the font faces it uses and stays sharp at any size, which suits a README or documentation.

My terminal only copies plain text. Does it still work?

Yes. Boron reads the escape codes themselves, so pipe a command's colored output to the clipboard and paste that. Terminals with no rich copy at all, such as Alacritty, WezTerm and tmux, still get the command-line highlighting.

Does anything get uploaded?

No. There is no server; parsing and rendering happen in your browser. A share link carries the document in the URL itself.

Is the source available?

Yes, at github.com/colinhacks/boron.