w3m can't display image in ecode's built-in terminal emulator

[ghost]

Nothing is shown in the terminal except for a black box and the message Hit any key to quit w3m:.

[SpartanJ]

w3m cannot display images, it will simply open an external image viewer (in linux is ImageMagick), on Windows probably won't do anything, but Google it.

[ghost]

Yes — w3m can display images inside the terminal, but only if your terminal emulator supports inline graphics.

This is what Copilot said.

[SpartanJ]

Most probably it's not compiled with image support. ecode terminal does not implement sixel or kitty image format, these are not part of any real VT specification, but maybe someday I'll support one or the other. To preview images I recommend chafa.

Yes, w3m can display inline images in web pages, but only when compiled with image support (often requiring a separate package like w3m-img on Linux distributions) and run in a compatible terminal emulator.
It does not display images by default in basic setups, and support is optional/conditional.
How it displays images
w3m uses an external helper program called w3mimgdisplay (usually located in /usr/lib/w3m/w3mimgdisplay or similar). This program communicates with the terminal to render images directly in the text buffer.
The specific method depends on the terminal:

In X11 environments (e.g., xterm, rxvt, GNOME Terminal, or others with support): It draws images using X11 graphics primitives (via libraries like GdkPixbuf or Imlib2).
In modern terminals: It supports protocols like Sixel (in terminals like foot, mlterm, or iTerm2 with libsixel), iTerm2's inline image protocol, or Kitty's graphics protocol (in newer forks or builds).
On Linux framebuffer: Direct framebuffer rendering is possible.

To enable it in w3m, press O for options, set "Display inline images" to YES, and ensure the "External command to display image" is set to w3mimgdisplay (or a compatible alternative).
Images appear inline if the terminal supports the underlying graphics protocol; otherwise, w3m just shows placeholders or links. This feature is commonly used for tools like image previews in ranger or browsing simple sites in the terminal.