🔍 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 different architectures
  • 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
• 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 in the wiki or a simpler version in ImHex under Help -> Pattern Language Cheat Sheet

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
  • Flatpak

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)[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 from python_libs in 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

Linux

Dependency installation scripts are available for many common Linux distributions in the (/dist)[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