PDpdpi·Aug 25, 2026
I've been using ImHex[0] for this purpose, to pretty good effect.
[0]: https://github.com/werwolv/imhex
In Visualizing Binary FilesWerWolv
ImHex
C++2020–2026
WerWolv / ImHex
ImHex
🔍 A Hex Editor for Reverse Engineers, Programmers and people who value their retinas when working at 3 AM.
34Distinct people
35Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
55.8KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
🔍 A Hex Editor for Reverse Engineers, Programmers and people who value their retinas when working at 3 AM.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
For anyone who regularly has to look at/analyze binary files, i highly recommend ImHex [1]. Its a hex editor built with imgui and has a lot of built in tools. Imo the best…
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This week on Hacker News
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HN mentions by year35 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2020-12-04 12:21:03 UTC to 2026-08-25 16:54:51 UTC.
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View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 4 | 2 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 9 | 0 | 9 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 11 | 1 | 10 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
What Hacker News says
35 sourcesImHex: Visualizing Hex Editor for Reverse Engineers, Programmers
2 points · Open discussionFor anyone who regularly has to look at/analyze binary files, i highly recommend ImHex [1].
Its a hex editor built with imgui and has a lot of built in tools. Imo the best feature is the data structure editor. You can write a data type definition similar to C and it overlays it on the hexdump and parses it in a structured way while you type.
It also has a node based editor.
1: https://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex
In Your hex editor should color-code bytesI find Geizhals' filtering options reasonably compact and information dense. https://geizhals.de/?cat=gra16_512&xf=132_16384&pg=1&view=li...
I like the simple table view of RPiLocator. Only a few columns, but lots of rows, no unneeded clutter. https://rpilocator.com/
Not as compact as possible, but at least shows quite some information: GSMArena. It could fit more phones into the comparison table with less whitespace/greyspace though. https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=10386&idPhone...
All sites as viewed on desktop, on mobile this would likely not work out.
I also want to echo the command line tools mention in another comment. GDB's TUI is reasonable for my use, but after some experience this recently posted terminal debugger might be better: https://github.com/al13n321/nnd via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43905185
Al
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so the hex editor I am currently using, despite some problems: https://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex
An example of an information dense GUI that might be a bit overwhelming is Ghidra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghidra (page includes a basic screenshot, you can fill your screen(s) with as many sub windows and information panes as you want)
As a side note, while trying to find examples I realized just how few websites there are (any more?) that show a lot of information at the same time. Worst recent offender is YouTube's redesign with only 3 video tiles in a row on a 1440p screen, luckily easily fixed via a ublock rule.
Look for tracing/profiling/binary analysis UIs:
- https://superuser.com/questions/1117466/using-windows-perfor...
- https://github.com/wolfpld/tracy
- https://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex
3D modeling / CAD software:
- Blender/Rhino etc
- Similar for audio you can search for 'DAWs' (https://blog.landr.com/best-daw/)
Many examples on https://x.com/usgraphics/media only some software.
Not on the data side but can be useful just for contrast from todays software:
- https://www.zachtronics.com/wmp-skins/
- https://cari.institute/aesthetics
In Ask HN: What are good high-information density UIs (screenshots, apps, sites)?Imhex is a really great frontend for Capstone.
https://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex
In Capstone Disassembler FrameworkWhen these tools come up, I like to post my little list of similar tools, for those interested. Apparently it's a hobby of mine:
* fq - like jq for binary data: https://github.com/wader/fq
* Kaitai Struct - https://kaitai.io/
* visualizer, for the above: https://github.com/kaitai-io/kaitai_struct_visualizer/
* HexFiend - a hex editor, but with "binary templates" feature : https://github.com/HexFiend/HexFiend
* binary templates, for the above: https://github.com/HexFiend/HexFiend/blob/master/templates/T...
* binspector - https://github.com/binspector/binspector
* binary-parsing - a collection of links to similar such tools : https://github.com/dloss/binary-parsing
* unblob - https://github.com/onekey-sec/unblob
* ImHex - https://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex
* GNU Poke - https://www.gnu.org/software/poke/
* dtrx - https://github.com/dtrx-py/dtr
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x/ dtrx
* feng - https://github.com/martinlindhe/feng
** they also have a similar list of prior art: https://github.com/martinlindhe/feng/blob/main/RESOURCES.md
And some previous HN threads for similar such tools:
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34434249 (unblob)
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34986042 (GNU Poke #1)
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36182873 (GNU Poke #2)
Maybe create an issue saying as much?
https://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex/issues
In Imhex: A hex editor for reverse engineershttps://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex
Oooh that looks slick, thanks for the tip!
In Imhex: A hex editor for reverse engineershttps://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40828493) is a hex editor specially made for people that do exactly that kind of binary editing.
In Zuckerberg disses closed-source AI competitors as trying to 'create God'Imhex: A hex editor for reverse engineers
634 points · Open discussionwxHexEditor is great but not really maintained and sometimes crashes (it even has a builtin prayer to save you from crashing https://github.com/EUA/wxHexEditor/blob/master/src/HexEditor...)
A good replacement is ImHex (https://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex). Which does the job really well.
In wxHexEditor — a Free Hex Editor / Disk Editor for Huge Files or DevicesImHex
“A Hex Editor for Reverse Engineers, Programmers and people who value their retinas when working at 3 AM.”
I actually used it not too long ago to inspect why a mp4 file wasn’t valid. The pattern language that they have is quite nice and having sections of the hex highlighted and being able to see what structures they represent and what data was on those structures was very useful!
https://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex
In Ask HN: What underrated open source project deserves more recognition?Haven't used HexWalk, but ImHex definitely supports this. It's called out in their README under Data Searching, called Sequence Search.
https://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex/blob/v1.32.2/README.md?plai...
In HexWalk – Hex Editor/Viewer/AnalyzerAny comparison to ImHex? https://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex
In HexWalk – Hex Editor/Viewer/AnalyzerShowing the 15 most recent of 35 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.