FIM aims to be a highly customizable and scriptable image viewer targeted at users who are comfortable with software like the Vim text editor or the Mutt mail user agent.

It is based on the Fbi image viewer, by Gerd Hoffmann, and works in the Linux framebuffer console mode, as well as under X/Xorg, using the SDL library. The right video mode gets auto-detected at runtime, and may be configured out at build time, if necessary.