Fastfetch
Fast system information tool written in C
Quick Take: Fastfetch
Fastfetch is the definitive system information tool for 2026. It does one thing — display your system details in the terminal — and does it faster and better than anything else. If you ever used neofetch, the switch is a no-brainer: it's faster, more accurate on modern hardware, and actively maintained. If you've never used a fetch tool, Fastfetch is a nice quality-of-life addition to your dotfiles that takes 30 seconds to set up and provides genuine utility when you need to quickly check what you're running on.
Best For
- •Dotfiles enthusiasts
- •System administrators
- •Developers who work across multiple machines
- •Anyone who used to use neofetch
Install with Homebrew
brew install --cask fastfetchWhat is Fastfetch?
Fastfetch is a system information tool that displays your operating system, kernel, hardware, and software details in a clean, colorful terminal printout — the kind of screenshot-worthy output you've seen in every r/unixporn post since 2015. It is the direct successor to neofetch, which was archived by its creator in April 2023 after years of declining maintenance. Written in C (not bash, like neofetch was), Fastfetch is orders of magnitude faster and far more configurable. The pitch is simple: you type `fastfetch` in your terminal and get an instant overview of your system — macOS version, chip model, memory usage, shell, terminal emulator, display resolution, package counts, and more — formatted next to an ASCII or image-based logo. It sounds trivial, but this tool serves a real purpose beyond vanity screenshots. Developers use it to quickly audit unfamiliar machines, dotfile maintainers embed it in their shell startup, and sysadmins run it across fleets to spot configuration drift. What makes Fastfetch genuinely useful (and not just a neofetch clone) is its module system. Every piece of information — CPU, GPU, battery, disk, Wi-Fi SSID, Bluetooth devices, even your current song in Spotify — is a discrete module you can enable, disable, reorder, or format. The configuration is a JSONC file, which means you can version-control it alongside your dotfiles and share it across macOS and Linux machines. On Apple Silicon Macs, Fastfetch correctly detects the unified memory architecture, reports GPU cores separately from CPU cores, and identifies the specific chip variant (M3, M3 Pro, M3 Max, M4) — details that neofetch never handled properly because it predated the transition.
Deep Dive: Why Fastfetch Replaced Neofetch
The story of how a C rewrite of a beloved bash script became the standard system info tool across every platform.
History & Background
Neofetch was created by Dylan Araps in 2015 as a bash script that displayed system information alongside an ASCII art logo. It became wildly popular — the default 'first thing I install' tool for Linux and macOS users who wanted to show off their setup. But neofetch had fundamental limitations: as a bash script, it was slow (spawning dozens of subprocesses per run), hard to extend, and increasingly brittle on newer hardware. Araps archived the repository in April 2023 without naming a successor. Fastfetch, which had been in development since 2022, quickly filled the vacuum.
How It Works
Fastfetch takes a fundamentally different approach from neofetch. Where neofetch shelled out to commands like `sysctl`, `system_profiler`, and `sw_vers` and parsed their text output, Fastfetch calls system APIs directly — IOKit on macOS, sysfs on Linux, WMI on Windows. This eliminates the overhead of spawning processes and parsing strings, resulting in execution times measured in milliseconds rather than seconds. The module system is compile-time configurable, meaning unused modules don't even get compiled into the binary.
Ecosystem & Integrations
The Fastfetch ecosystem is centered around config sharing. The GitHub repository's 'presets' directory contains curated configurations for different use cases — minimal, full, hardware-only, developer-focused. The r/unixporn community has embraced Fastfetch as the standard fetch tool, and most rice screenshots in 2025-2026 use it. Third-party tools like `fastfetch-themes` provide one-command theme installation.
Future Development
Active development continues with a focus on expanding hardware detection (newer GPU families, peripheral devices), improving Windows support, and adding more output formatters. The maintainers have resisted feature creep — Fastfetch remains a system info display tool, not a system monitor — which keeps the binary small and fast.
Key Features
Blazing Speed via C Implementation
Neofetch was a bash script that spawned dozens of subprocesses to gather system info — it could take 2-3 seconds to render on some machines. Fastfetch is written in pure C with direct system API calls. On a typical M3 MacBook Pro, it renders in under 30 milliseconds. You can put it in your .zshrc without adding any perceptible delay to shell startup, which was always the complaint about neofetch.
Module System with 80+ Data Points
Every line of output is a module: OS, Host, Kernel, Uptime, Packages, Shell, Display, DE, WM, Terminal, CPU, GPU, Memory, Disk, Battery, LocalIP, PublicIP, Locale, Bluetooth, Sound, Player, Media, Weather, and many more. You choose exactly what shows up in your output and in what order. Modules can include custom formatting strings, key labels, and colors.
JSONC Configuration
Configuration lives in ~/.config/fastfetch/config.jsonc. The JSONC format (JSON with comments) lets you annotate your setup, and because it's structured data, tools can parse and generate configs programmatically. Run `fastfetch --gen-config` to create a starter config with all available options documented. This is a massive upgrade over neofetch's bash-based config that mixed code and data.
Cross-Platform Consistency
Fastfetch runs on macOS, Linux (all major distros), Windows, FreeBSD, and Android via Termux. The same config file works everywhere. If you maintain dotfiles that sync across a MacBook and a Linux server, your system info display looks consistent on both. Platform-specific modules (like macOS Battery health or Linux DE detection) gracefully skip when they're not applicable.
Apple Silicon Detection
On Apple Silicon Macs, Fastfetch correctly reports the exact chip variant (Apple M3, Apple M4 Pro, etc.), the number of performance and efficiency cores, the GPU core count, and the unified memory pool. It pulls this from IOKit directly rather than parsing sysctl output, which means the data is accurate and doesn't depend on string parsing heuristics that break across macOS versions.
Logo Rendering Options
Beyond the classic ASCII art logo, Fastfetch can render logos using Sixel graphics, the Kitty image protocol, or iTerm2 inline images. This means you can display actual PNG/JPEG logos in terminals that support it (Ghostty, Kitty, WezTerm, iTerm2). You can also use custom ASCII art from a file, or disable the logo entirely for a compact, data-only output.
Who Should Use Fastfetch?
1The Dotfiles Enthusiast
This developer maintains a public dotfiles repository on GitHub and takes pride in a clean, informative terminal setup. They add `fastfetch` to their .zshrc so every new shell session opens with a quick system summary. Because Fastfetch renders in under 30ms, there's zero startup delay. Their config shows OS, shell, terminal, CPU, memory, and package count — just enough to be useful without cluttering the screen. When they screenshot their setup for r/unixporn, the output looks sharp and custom.
2The Multi-Machine Sysadmin
Managing a mix of macOS workstations and Ubuntu servers, this admin SSHes into machines regularly and needs to quickly confirm what they're working on — which OS version, how much RAM is free, what kernel is running, how long the box has been up. They install Fastfetch everywhere via Homebrew (macOS) and apt (Ubuntu) with the same JSONC config in their dotfiles repo. A glance at the output tells them if they're on the right machine before they start running commands.
3The Content Creator / Streamer
A developer who creates YouTube tutorials or streams coding sessions uses Fastfetch at the start of each video to show viewers their setup — 'Here's what I'm running today.' The image logo mode displays their distro or macOS logo in full color, and the module list is trimmed to the essentials: OS, CPU, GPU, RAM, editor, and terminal. It's a professional touch that takes 10 seconds and gives context to the audience.
How to Install Fastfetch on Mac
Fastfetch is available in the Homebrew core formula repository. It installs as a single binary with no dependencies.
Install via Homebrew
Run `brew install fastfetch`. This installs the latest stable release as a compiled C binary. No cask needed — it's a CLI tool.
Run It
Type `fastfetch` in your terminal. You'll see the default output with an Apple logo and your system details. No configuration required for basic use.
Generate a Config (Optional)
Run `fastfetch --gen-config` to create `~/.config/fastfetch/config.jsonc` with all options documented. Edit this file to customize which modules appear, their order, and formatting.
Add to Shell Startup (Optional)
Add `fastfetch` as the last line of your `~/.zshrc` to display system info on every new terminal session. It's fast enough that you won't notice any delay.
Pro Tips
- • Use `fastfetch --list-modules` to see every available module and its configuration keys.
- • Try `fastfetch --logo-type kitty` in Ghostty or Kitty terminal for a full-color image logo instead of ASCII art.
- • Pair with a Nerd Font (like JetBrainsMono Nerd Font) for proper icon rendering in module labels.
Configuration Tips
Minimal Shell Startup Config
For a clean .zshrc integration, create a config that shows only OS, Host, CPU, Memory, and Shell. Set `"logo": {"type": "small"}` for a compact ASCII logo that takes up 5-6 lines instead of 20. This gives you useful info without taking over the terminal.
Conditional Display Based on Terminal
If your terminal supports the Kitty image protocol (Ghostty, Kitty, WezTerm), use `--logo-type kitty` for rich image logos. In terminals that don't (SSH sessions, basic Terminal.app), Fastfetch automatically falls back to ASCII. You can also set `"logo": {"source": "/path/to/custom.png"}` for a personal logo.
Alternatives to Fastfetch
Fastfetch is the clear successor to neofetch, but there are other tools in the system information space worth knowing about.
neofetch
The original. Archived in April 2023 and no longer maintained. It still works on most systems but doesn't detect newer hardware (M3/M4 chips, newer GPUs) correctly. Fastfetch is a direct upgrade in every dimension — speed, accuracy, and configurability.
btop
btop is a real-time system monitor with a beautiful TUI — it shows live CPU, memory, network, and process data. Fastfetch is a one-shot info display. They complement each other perfectly: Fastfetch for a quick snapshot, btop for live monitoring.
macchina
Another neofetch replacement written in Rust. Macchina is fast and has a clean aesthetic, but its module system is less extensive than Fastfetch's, and its macOS support has lagged behind. Fastfetch has a larger community and more frequent releases.
Pricing
Fastfetch is completely free and open source under the MIT License. It has no paid tiers, no telemetry, and no premium features. The project is maintained by a community of contributors on GitHub, with LinusDier686 as the primary maintainer. Development is active, with frequent releases addressing new hardware detection and platform updates.
Pros
- ✓Extremely fast — renders in under 30ms on Apple Silicon
- ✓Replaces the abandoned neofetch with active maintenance
- ✓80+ configurable modules for granular control over output
- ✓JSONC config is clean, documented, and version-controllable
- ✓Cross-platform with consistent behavior across macOS, Linux, and Windows
- ✓Accurate Apple Silicon chip detection (M-series variants, GPU cores)
- ✓Supports image logos via Kitty protocol, Sixel, and iTerm2 inline images
- ✓Zero dependencies — single compiled binary
Cons
- ✗No GUI — strictly a command-line tool
- ✗JSONC config can feel verbose compared to neofetch's simpler (if messier) bash config
- ✗Some niche modules (Weather, PublicIP) require external API calls that add latency
- ✗Community presets and themes are less organized than neofetch's were
Community & Support
Fastfetch has a healthy open-source community centered around its GitHub repository (github.com/fastfetch-cli/fastfetch), which has accumulated over 10,000 stars. Issues are responded to quickly, and the release cadence is roughly biweekly. The r/unixporn subreddit remains the primary showcase for Fastfetch configurations, with many posts including their config.jsonc for others to replicate. There's no official Discord, but GitHub Discussions serves as the main support channel.
Frequently Asked Questions about Fastfetch
Our Verdict
Fastfetch is the definitive system information tool for 2026. It does one thing — display your system details in the terminal — and does it faster and better than anything else. If you ever used neofetch, the switch is a no-brainer: it's faster, more accurate on modern hardware, and actively maintained. If you've never used a fetch tool, Fastfetch is a nice quality-of-life addition to your dotfiles that takes 30 seconds to set up and provides genuine utility when you need to quickly check what you're running on.
About the Author
Productivity & Workflow Analyst
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Sources & References
Fact-CheckedLast verified: Feb 23, 2026
Key Verified Facts
- Fastfetch is the direct successor to neofetch, which was archived by its creator in April 2023.[cite-fastfetch-gh]
- 1Fastfetch GitHub Repository
Accessed Feb 23, 2026
Research queries: fastfetch Mac 2026 neofetch replacement