sm
Display fullscreen text messages
TLDR
SYNOPSIS
sm [OPTIONS] [text|-]
DESCRIPTION
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).
PARAMETERS
-f, --foreground color
Set text color (name or hex code like #RRGGBB)-b, --background color
Set background color-i, --invert
Swap foreground and background colors-r, --rotate n
Rotate display (n * 90 degrees counterclockwise)-k, --kiosk
Non-interactive mode (ignores input except Ctrl-Q)-n, --font fontspec
Specify font family-a, --align alignment
Text alignment: 0=center, 1=left, 2=right-m, --markup
Enable Pango markup XML formatting-
Read text from standard input-h, --help
Display help-V, --version
Display version
CAVEATS
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.
HISTORY
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.
