🔍 ImHex

A Hex Editor for Reverse Engineers, Programmers and people who value their retinas when working at 3 AM.

Supporting

If you like my work, please consider supporting me on GitHub Sponsors, Patreon or PayPal. Thanks a lot!

Screenshots

Features

• Featureful hex view
  • Byte patching
  • Patch management
  • Copy bytes as feature
    • Bytes
    • Hex string
    • C, C++, C#, Rust, Python, Java & JavaScript array
    • ASCII-Art hex view
    • HTML self contained div
  • String and hex search
  • Colorful highlighting
  • Goto from start, end and current cursor position
• Custom C++-like pattern language for parsing highlighting a file's content
  • Automatic loading based on MIME type
  • arrays, pointers, structs, unions, enums, bitfields, namespaces, little and big endian support, conditionals and much more!
  • Useful error messages, syntax highlighting and error marking
• Data importing
  • Base64 files
  • IPS and IPS32 patches
• Data exporting
  • IPS and IPS32 patches
• Data inspector allowing interpretation of data as many different types (little and big endian)
• Huge file support with fast and efficient loading
• String search
  • Copying of strings
  • Copying of demangled strings
• File hashing support
  • CRC16 and CRC32 with custom initial values and polynomials
  • MD4, MD5
  • SHA-1, SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512
• Disassembler supporting many architectures (frontend for Capstone)
  • ARM32 (ARM, Thumb, Cortex-M, AArch32)
  • ARM64
  • MIPS (MIPS32, MIPS64, MIPS32R6, Micro)
  • x86 (16-bit, 32-bit, 64-bit)
  • PowerPC (32-bit, 64-bit)
  • SPARC
  • IBM SystemZ
  • xCORE
  • M68K
  • TMS320C64X
  • M680X
  • Ethereum
  • RISC-V
  • WebAssembly
  • MOS565XX
  • Berkeley Packet Filter
• Bookmarks
  • Region highlighting
  • Comments
• Data Analyzer
  • File magic-based file parser and MIME type database
  • Byte distribution graph
  • Entropy graph
  • Highest and average entropy
  • Encrypted / Compressed file detection
• Built-in Content Store
  • Download all files found in the database directly from within ImHex
• Yara Rules support
  • Quickly scan a file for vulnearabilities with official yara rules
• Helpful tools
  • Itanium and MSVC demangler
  • ASCII table
  • Regex replacer
  • Mathematical expression evaluator (Calculator)
  • Hexadecimal Color picker
  • Base converter
  • UNIX Permissions calculator
  • Anonfiles File upload tool
  • Wikipedia term definition finder
  • File utilities
    • File splitter
    • File combiner
    • File shredderer
• Built-in cheat sheet for pattern language and Math evaluator
• Doesn't burn out your retinas when used in late-night sessions

Pattern Language

The custom C-like Pattern Language developed and used by ImHex is easy to read, understand and learn. A guide with all features of the language can be found on the docs page.

Plugin development

To develop plugins for ImHex, use one of the following two templates projects to get startet. You then have access to the entirety of libimhex as well as the ImHex API and the Content Registry to interact with ImHex or to add new content.

• C++ Plugin Template
• Rust Plugin Template

Additional Files

For format patterns, includable libraries and magic files, check out the ImHex-Patterns repository. Feel free to PR your own files there as well!

Nightly builds

Nightlies are available via GitHub Actions here.

• Windows • x86_64
  • MSI
  • EXE
• MacOS • x86_64
  • DMG
• Linux • x86_64
  • ELF
  • DEB
  • Flatpak
  • AppImage

Compiling

You need a C++20 compatible compiler such as GCC 10.2.0 to compile ImHex.

Many dependencies are bundled into the repository using submodules so make sure to clone it using the --recurse-submodules option. All dependencies that aren't bundled, can be installed using the dependency installer scripts found in the /dist folder.

For working examples

Windows

On Windows, ImHex is built through msys2 / mingw. To install all dependencies, open a mys2 window and run the PKGCONFIG script in the dist/msys2 folder. After all the dependencies are installed, run the following commands to build ImHex:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
make -j

---

To create a standalone zipfile on Windows, get the Python standard library (e.g. from https://github.com/python/cpython/tree/master/Lib) and place the files and folders in lib/python3.8 next to your built executable. Don't forget to also copy the libpython3.8.dll and libwinpthread-1.dll from your mingw setup next to the executable.

• Copy the files inside the /resources/lib/python folder into the lib folder next to your built executable.
• Place your magic databases in the magic folder next to your built executable
• Place your patterns in the pattern folder next to your built executable
• Place your include pattern files in the include folder next to your built executable

macOS

To build ImHex on macOS, run the following commands:

brew bundle --no-lock --file dist/Brewfile
mkdir build
cd build
CC=$(brew --prefix llvm)/bin/clang CXX=$(brew --prefix llvm)/bin/clang++ PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$(brew --prefix openssl)/lib/pkgconfig":"$(brew --prefix)/lib/pkgconfig" cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
make -j

Install the ImHex executable as well as libimhex.dylib to wherever ImHex should be installed.

All other files belong in ~/Library/Application Support/imhex:

Patterns: ~/Library/Application Support/imhex/patterns
Pattern Includes: ~/Library/Application Support/imhex/includes
Magic files: ~/Library/Application Support/imhex/magic
Python: ~/Library/Application Support/imhex/lib/pythonX.X
Plugins: ~/Library/Application Support/imhex/plugins
Configuration: ~/Library/Application Support/imhex/config
Resources: ~/Library/Application Support/imhex/resources

If the build fails while trying to find the macOS libraries, make sure you have XCode installed with xcode-select --install. Homebrew will also help get the most recent SDK installed and configured with brew doctor.

Linux

Dependency installation scripts are available for many common Linux distributions in the /dist folder. After all the dependencies are installed, run the following commands to build ImHex:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
make -j

---

Put the ImHex executable into the /usr/bin folder. Put libimhex.so into the /usr/lib folder. Configuration files go to /etc/xdg/imhex or ~/.config/imhex. All other files belong in /usr/share/imhex or ~/.local/share/imhex:

Patterns: /usr/share/imhex/patterns
Pattern Includes: /usr/share/imhex/includes
Magic files: /usr/share/imhex/magic
Python: /usr/share/imhex/lib/pythonX.X
Plugins: /usr/share/imhex/plugins
Configuration: /etc/xdg/imhex/config
Resources: /usr/share/imhex/resources

All paths follow the XDG Base Directories standard, and can thus be modified with the environment variables XDG_CONFIG_HOME, XDG_CONFIG_DIRS, XDG_DATA_HOME and XDG_DATA_DIRS.

Credits

Contributors

• Mary for her immense help porting ImHex to MacOS and help during development
• Roblabla for adding MSI Installer support to ImHex
• jam1garner and raytwo for their help with adding Rust support to plugins
• All other people that have been reporting issues on Discord or GitHub that I had great conversations with :)

Libraries

• Thanks a lot to ocornut for their amazing Dear ImGui which is used for building the entire interface
  • Thanks to ocornut as well for their hex editor view used as base for this project.
  • Thanks to BalazsJako for their incredible ImGuiColorTextEdit used for the pattern language syntax highlighting
• Thanks to nlohmann for their json library used for project files
• Thanks to aquynh for capstone which is the base of the disassembly window
• Thanks to vitaut for their libfmt library which makes formatting and logging so much better
• Thanks to rxi for microtar used for extracting downloaded store assets