chemview

CLI for visualizing SMILES strings as 2D molecule images using RDKit.

Setup

Requires uv.

uv sync

Usage

By default, images are displayed inline in the terminal using the Kitty or Sixel graphics protocol. If your terminal doesn't support either, chemview falls back to opening the image in your system viewer.

# render a molecule inline in the terminal
uv run chemview "CCO"

# benzene, custom dimensions
uv run chemview "c1ccccc1" --width 600 --height 400

# save to a specific file instead of displaying
uv run chemview "CC(=O)Oc1ccccc1C(=O)O" -o aspirin.png

Run uv run chemview --help for all options.

Global install

To make chemview available from anywhere on your system:

# editable — stays linked to source, code changes take effect immediately
uv tool install -e .

# or, frozen copy — requires re-install to pick up changes
uv tool install .

Then just run chemview "CCO" from any directory.

To uninstall: uv tool uninstall chemview.