diff --git a/Project.toml b/Project.toml
index 4628e8bb7..a7a6645dc 100644
--- a/Project.toml
+++ b/Project.toml
@@ -74,7 +74,7 @@ Showoff = "0.3.1, 1"
 SnoopPrecompile = "1"
 StatsBase = "0.33"
 UnicodeFun = "0.4"
-UnicodePlots = "2.10, 3"
+UnicodePlots = "3.4"
 Unzip = "0.1 - 0.2"
 julia = "1.6"
 
@@ -84,6 +84,7 @@ Colors = "5ae59095-9a9b-59fe-a467-6f913c188581"
 Distributions = "31c24e10-a181-5473-b8eb-7969acd0382f"
 FileIO = "5789e2e9-d7fb-5bc7-8068-2c6fae9b9549"
 FilePathsBase = "48062228-2e41-5def-b9a4-89aafe57970f"
+FreeType = "b38be410-82b0-50bf-ab77-7b57e271db43"
 Gaston = "4b11ee91-296f-5714-9832-002c20994614"
 GeometryBasics = "5c1252a2-5f33-56bf-86c9-59e7332b4326"
 Gtk = "4c0ca9eb-093a-5379-98c5-f87ac0bbbf44"
@@ -112,4 +113,4 @@ Unitful = "1986cc42-f94f-5a68-af5c-568840ba703d"
 VisualRegressionTests = "34922c18-7c2a-561c-bac1-01e79b2c4c92"
 
 [targets]
-test = ["Aqua", "Colors", "Distributions", "FileIO", "FilePathsBase", "Gaston", "GeometryBasics", "Gtk", "ImageMagick", "Images", "InspectDR", "LibGit2", "OffsetArrays", "PGFPlotsX", "PlotlyJS", "PlotlyBase", "PyPlot", "PythonPlot", "PlotlyKaleido", "HDF5", "RDatasets", "SentinelArrays", "StableRNGs", "StaticArrays", "StatsPlots", "Test", "TestImages", "UnicodePlots", "Unitful", "VisualRegressionTests"]
+test = ["Aqua", "Colors", "Distributions", "FileIO", "FilePathsBase", "FreeType", "Gaston", "GeometryBasics", "Gtk", "ImageMagick", "Images", "InspectDR", "LibGit2", "OffsetArrays", "PGFPlotsX", "PlotlyJS", "PlotlyBase", "PyPlot", "PythonPlot", "PlotlyKaleido", "HDF5", "RDatasets", "SentinelArrays", "StableRNGs", "StaticArrays", "StatsPlots", "Test", "TestImages", "UnicodePlots", "Unitful", "VisualRegressionTests"]
diff --git a/src/backends/unicodeplots.jl b/src/backends/unicodeplots.jl
index 6c1daf449..2b8edebc1 100644
--- a/src/backends/unicodeplots.jl
+++ b/src/backends/unicodeplots.jl
@@ -275,6 +275,10 @@ end
 # ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
 function _show(io::IO, ::MIME"image/png", plt::Plot{UnicodePlotsBackend})
+    applicable(UnicodePlots.save_image, io) ||
+        "Plots(UnicodePlots): saving to `.png` requires `import FreeType, FileIO`" |>
+        ArgumentError |>
+        throw
     prepare_output(plt)
     nr, nc = size(plt.layout)
     s1, s2 = map(_ -> zeros(Int, nr, nc), 1:2)
@@ -310,8 +314,7 @@ function _show(io::IO, ::MIME"image/png", plt::Plot{UnicodePlotsBackend})
             end
             n1 += m1[r]
         end
-        stream = UnicodePlots.FileIO.Stream{UnicodePlots.FileIO.format"PNG"}(io)
-        UnicodePlots.FileIO.save(stream, img)
+        UnicodePlots.save_image(io, img)
     end
     nothing
 end
diff --git a/src/init.jl b/src/init.jl
index f6a2622c8..c6a0e491c 100644
--- a/src/init.jl
+++ b/src/init.jl
@@ -144,6 +144,10 @@ include(_path(backend_name()))
                     show(devnull, pl)
                     # FIXME: pgfplotsx requires bug
                     backend_name() === :pgfplotsx && return
+                    if backend_name() === :unicodeplots
+                        savefig(pl, "$fn.txt")
+                        return
+                    end
                     showable(MIME"image/png"(), pl) && savefig(pl, "$fn.png")
                     showable(MIME"application/pdf"(), pl) && savefig(pl, "$fn.pdf")
                     nothing
diff --git a/test/runtests.jl b/test/runtests.jl
index ab75805de..138ef01bc 100644
--- a/test/runtests.jl
+++ b/test/runtests.jl
@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@ import SentinelArrays: ChainedVector
 import GeometryBasics
 import OffsetArrays
 import ImageMagick
+import FreeType  # for `unicodeplots`
 import LibGit2
 import Aqua
 import JSON