Introduction

why figlet is worth five minutes of your time

You've probably scrolled past a terminal screenshot at some point

and noticed a huge blocky text banner sitting at the top. Big

chunky letters, built from slashes and pipes. Looks like someone

spent hours on it. They didn't. That's figlet — and getting it

running in Termux on your Android device takes maybe sixty

seconds.

No root. No complicated setup. One command.

I put figlet on every Termux build I work on, and I've been doing

that for a while now. Not because it's critical. Because it makes

the terminal feel like something you actually set up yourself,

not just a blank black screen with a cursor blinking at you.

In this post you'll get the full picture — what figlet is, where

it came from, why people actually use it, what your device needs,

and every install step broken down clearly.

What is figlet, actually?

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Figlet is a command-line program. You hand it a word or a phrase,

it throws it back at you in large decorative letters made entirely

from keyboard characters — dashes, pipes, underscores, slashes.

No images. No graphics engine. Just text.

And that's the thing most people don't immediately get — because

the output is plain text, it plays nice with literally everything

else in the terminal. Pipe it. Redirect it into a file. Drop it

inside a shell script. It doesn't care. It just outputs

characters, same as any other command.

The name is kind of funny. Figlet stands for "Frank, Ian, and

Glenn's Letters" — named straight after the three guys who built

it back around 1991. Started on Unix systems, quietly spread

everywhere over the next few decades, and now it runs on Termux

on Android without any fuss at all.

There's also a font system built in. The default gives you that

chunky block style, but you can switch to slanted, outlined, or

other styles by passing a single flag. Fonts live as .flf files

on disk, so you can even grab extra ones online and drop them in

manually if you want something the defaults don't give you.

Why would you want figlet on your Android terminal?

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Okay, fair question. Big text. So what?

The most common use I see is the .bashrc greeting. People add

one line to their Termux config and their terminal opens with

their name in massive letters every single session. Sounds like

a vanity thing. And yeah, it kind of is — but there's something

about seeing your own name up there that makes the setup feel

genuinely yours. I think that matters more than people admit,

especially when you're spending hours in the terminal.

Beyond that, figlet earns real value inside scripts. Say you've

got a script running five or six different tasks. Sticking a

figlet header before each stage means you can see at a glance

exactly where execution is sitting when something goes sideways

— and something always goes sideways eventually. Clear markers

in output save time. A lot of time, actually.

And look — for anyone just getting into Termux — figlet is a

genuinely solid first install. You learn how pkg works. You learn

about flags. You learn piping. All of it in a completely low-

stakes environment where the worst outcome is just running the

command again. I'd honestly recommend it as a starting point

before you get into heavier tools.

Before you start — what your device actually needs

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Not much. Seriously.

Termux on your Android device — get it from F-Droid, not the

Play Store. The Play Store version hasn't been maintained in

years and causes package errors that have nothing to do with

what you're actually trying to do. F-Droid is the one that works.

You need an internet connection during the install so Termux can

pull figlet down from its servers. And storage? Figlet is under

a megabyte. Don't even think about it.

Root access — you don't need it. Not at any point. This whole

process runs inside Termux's standard user environment.

One thing before the steps: update your package list first.

A lot of people jump straight to the install and then spend

twenty minutes confused about errors that pkg update would've

prevented. Same deal with most Termux installs, honestly —

update first, install after.

How to get figlet running in Termux — step by step

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Open Termux. Go through these in order, and read what each

command does before you run it.

Step 1 — refresh your package list

    pkg update

Termux reaches out to its servers and pulls the latest list of

what's available. You'll see a wall of output — that's normal.

If it asks you to confirm anything, type y and hit Enter.

Step 2 — update what's already on your system

    pkg upgrade

Updates everything already installed. Optional, but I always

run it. Fewer conflicts later. Press y when prompted.

Step 3 — pull in figlet

    pkg install figlet

Termux handles the rest. Watch for this kind of output:

    Get:1 ... figlet_2.2.5 ...

    Unpacking figlet ...

    Setting up figlet ...

No error after "Setting up"? You're done.

Step 4 — test it

    figlet Hello

Your screen should show something roughly like this:

Blocky letters. Go try it with your own name.

Step 5 — switch the font

    figlet -f slant Hello

The -f flag picks a font. Slant leans the letters over and looks

pretty clean. More on browsing all the fonts below.

Errors that actually trip people up

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If Termux says it can't find figlet at all — package list is

stale. Run pkg update and go again after that.

The dpkg interrupted error is messier. If you see something

about dpkg needing manual intervention, run dpkg --configure -a

first, then retry the install. That clears the broken state.

Okay so this is the part that catches people off guard — figlet

installs without errors, you type figlet hello, and Termux says

command not found. Close Termux completely. Not minimize — fully

close it. Open a fresh session. The PATH from the session you

installed in sometimes doesn't pick up new commands. New session

sorts it immediately.

And if the -f font flag throws an error, you're probably using

a name that isn't on your system yet. Run showfigfonts first

and pick from what actually shows up.

Things beginners don't usually think to do

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Before you randomly pick a font, run this:

    showfigfonts | less

Previews everything installed. The list is long so the | less

part lets you scroll — arrow keys to move, q to get out.

For the greeting trick: open nano ~/.bashrc, drop figlet YourName

on a new line at the bottom, save with Ctrl+X, then reload with

source ~/.bashrc. Every Termux session greets you from now on.

And if you want to take it somewhere ridiculous — install lolcat

(pkg install ruby && gem install lolcat) and run:

    figlet Hello | lolcat

Rainbow ASCII. Completely over the top. Worth doing at least once.

Questions people actually ask about figlet in Termux

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Do I need to root my phone to get figlet working?

  Nope. Zero root involved at any step. Runs inside the normal

  Termux user space, no elevated permissions needed.

Can I bring in fonts that aren't part of the default install?

  Yeah — download any .flf font file and drop it into:

  /data/data/com.termux/files/usr/share/figlet/

  Then call it with figlet -f fontname yourtext

I want to save the ASCII output as a file — is that doable?

  Just redirect it. figlet Hello > banner.txt saves the whole

  thing as plain text you can use anywhere.

What if I want to ditch figlet later?

  pkg uninstall figlet pulls it off your system. Clean removal.

Does it behave differently when called from inside a script?

  No difference at all. Works exactly the same either way.

Wrapping up

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Figlet in Termux is one of those quick wins — small install,

immediate payoff, and you actually pick up a few things about

how Termux works along the way. Get it set up. Run your name

through it. Then add it to your .bashrc and see how different

your terminal feels when it greets you every time you open it.

Next one worth checking out is the lolcat install guide over at

hydratermux.blogspot.com — pairs directly with figlet and takes

about the same amount of time to set up.

Just a heads up: everything here is meant for learning and

experimenting on your own device. Don't run things on systems

that aren't yours.

About the author 

Rixon Xavier runs HYDRA TERMUX — a blog for people who want to

actually understand what's happening in their terminal, not just

paste commands and pray.