The latest builds of iTerm2 support an API for displaying images in the terminal. It can display any Base64-encoded PNG or JPEG image inline or as a download. Guess what, Poltergeist can render the current page as a… Base64-encoded PNG or JPEG! Let’s combine the two with this little snippet of Ruby in our spec_helper.rb file:

def show_screenshot(width = 640)
  print "\033]1337;File=;inline=1;width=#{width}px:"
  print page.driver.render_base64
  print "\a\n"
end

Combine this with a call to Pry’s binding.pry and now you can interact with your page and see the results of your capybara commands. Kind of like a web browser, but in your terminal!