A lightweight command-line hex viewer in C with focused colors, heatmaps, entropy, search, string mode, and clean pipe support.

• Why hxed
• Key Features
• Feature Tour
• Build & Install
• Usage
• Options
• Examples
• Contributing
• License

hexdump and xxd are solid tools. hxed is for the moments where a plain dump is technically enough, but still slows you down.

• It makes structure easier to spot at a glance.
• It keeps strings, null bytes, and noisy regions visually distinct.
• It gives you one small tool for normal dumps, focused searches, entropy checks, raw output, and pipe workflows.
• Intuitive usage with bash completion for fish, bash, zsh and Powershell. No wered / complex flags!

If you spend time inspecting binaries, debugging odd files, reversing formats, or comparing unknown blobs, hxed is built to make that pass faster and easier on the eyes.

Quick jumps:

• Header + footer analysis
• Normal dump
• Grouping view
• Heatmap gradient
• Fixed heatmap art
• Entropy view
• ASCII search
• String mode
• Pipe workflow

Classic layout, readable addresses, colored bytes, and ASCII preview without losing the terminal feel.

Header info, footer analysis, and magic-byte detection help you understand a file at a glance instead of manually piecing it together.

Grouping helps separate structured fields quickly when scanning packed binary data.

Fixed heatmap mode gives you a stable 16-step palette across the full byte range, while adaptiv remaps the same idea to the actual min/max values in the file.

Useful for spotting compressed, encrypted, or unusually uniform regions quickly.

Search mode narrows the dump to the relevant lines instead of making you grep around raw hex output.

Useful when embedded strings, paths, config fragments, or keys matter more than the raw byte values.

Pipe-friendly usage keeps it practical in shell workflows where hexdump and xxd often end up wrapped in extra commands.

Linux / macOS:

chmod +x scripts/install.sh
./scripts/install.sh

Windows PowerShell:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\scripts\install.ps1

Notes:

• scripts/install.sh installs the binary for the current user and can also copy Bash, Zsh, and Fish completions.
• scripts/install.ps1 installs hxed.exe, can add the install directory to the user PATH, and can register the PowerShell completion in your PowerShell profile.
• The current GitHub release workflow publishes hxed-linux-x64, hxed-windows-x64.exe, and hxed-macos-arm64. On unsupported architectures, the installer falls back to building from source.

Requirements: a C compiler (gcc or clang) and CMake.

# Quick build via Makefile
make

# Or manually with CMake
cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build

cmake --install build

Windows tip: Add */build/bin to your PATH environment variable to use hxed from any terminal.

If you prefer manual setup, the completion files live in completions/:

# Bash
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions
cp completions/hxed.bash ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions/hxed

# Zsh
mkdir -p ~/.zsh/completions
cp completions/_hxed ~/.zsh/completions/_hxed
# add once to ~/.zshrc
fpath=(~/.zsh/completions $fpath)
autoload -Uz compinit && compinit

# Fish
mkdir -p ~/.config/fish/completions
cp completions/hxed.fish ~/.config/fish/completions/hxed.fish

PowerShell:

. "$PWD\completions\hxed.ps1"

# Linux / macOS
sudo xargs rm < build/install_manifest.txt

# Windows (PowerShell)
Get-Content build\install_manifest.txt | Remove-Item

hxed [options] [filename]
cat file.bin | hxed [options]

Notes:

• Toggle flags flip the current default state.
• -a disables ASCII because ASCII is on by default.
• -c disables colors because color is on by default.
• -th disables the header/footer block because it is on by default.
• -se highlights the matched bytes and only prints matching lines.
• --limit must not be less than --offset.
• Magic byte detection is disabled when --offset is set.
• Search currently works for files, not for stdin.
• When reading from stdin, a filename is not required.
• If stdin and a filename is given, stdin is ignored.

# Basic hex dump
hxed example.txt

# Smaller width
hxed -w 8 example.txt

# Group bytes in blocks of 4
hxed -g 4 firmware.bin

# 32 bytes/line, toggle ASCII column off
hxed -w 32 -a secret.bin

# Render in decimal mode
hxed -m dec -g 8 sample.bin

# Adaptive heatmap on a binary
hxed -hm adaptiv image.png

# Fixed heatmap, toggle ASCII off
hxed -hm fixed -a sample.bin

# Skip zero-only lines
hxed -sz firmware.bin

# Inspect a slice of a file (bytes 1024–2048)
hxed -o 1k -l 2k sample.bin

# String highlighting
hxed -s image.png

# Search for an ASCII pattern
hxed -se 'a:ABC' sample.bin

# Search for a hex pattern
hxed -se 'x:FF D8 FF' photo.jpg

# Search for decimal bytes
hxed -se 'd:72,101,108,108,111' sample.bin

# Search for binary bytes
hxed -se 'b:01001000,01101001' sample.bin

# Raw output into a file (no newlines, no ANSI)
hxed -w 0 -ro binary > output.txt

# Pipe from stdin
cat sample.bin | hxed -w 32
echo 'Hello World' | hxed

# Toggle colors off, then pipe to less
hxed -c file | less -R

hxed is open-source and contributions are always welcome!

• Found a bug? 🐛 — Open an Issue
• Have an idea? 💡 — Start a thread in Discussions
• Want to contribute code? 💻 — PRs are welcome! Whether it's a performance tweak, new color theme, or a brand new feature — jump in.

MIT License © 2026 Joshua Jallow — see LICENSE for details.