sm

Display a message fullscreen

$ sm "Hello World!"

$ sm -i "Hello World!"

$ sm -f blue "Hello World!"

$ sm -b "#008888" "Hello World!"

$ sm -r 3 "Hello World!"

$ echo "Hello World!" | sm -

$ sm -k "Message"

sm [OPTIONS] [text|-]

sm (screen-message) displays text as large as possible on the screen, automatically scaling to fill the available space. It creates a fullscreen window with the message, useful for presentations, signage, or displaying information at events.
In interactive mode, users can edit the displayed text by typing. Press Escape to clear text, Ctrl-I to invert colors, and Ctrl-Q or double-Escape to quit. When reading from stdin with -, the display updates at form-feed characters (\f).

-f, --foreground color

Set text color (name or hex code like #RRGGBB)

Set background color

Swap foreground and background colors

Rotate display (n * 90 degrees counterclockwise)

Non-interactive mode (ignores input except Ctrl-Q)

Specify font family

Text alignment: 0=center, 1=left, 2=right

Enable Pango markup XML formatting

Read text from standard input

Display help

Display version

Requires a graphical display (X11 or Wayland). Text size adjusts automatically; very long messages result in smaller fonts. Interactive editing is disabled in kiosk mode. Font availability depends on system installation.

sm (screen-message) was created by Joachim Breitner (nomeata) as a simple display utility. It has been used at Debian conferences and other events for photo displays and signage. The tool is available for Linux, Windows, and as a web application. Released under GPL-2.0 license.

figlet(6), toilet(1), banner(1)