mindoodoo/ratatui

Ratatui is a library that lets you build text-based user interfaces (terminal UIs) in Rust. If you've ever used command-line tools with interactive menus, dashboards, or formatted text displays, think htop, vim, or lazygit, those are the kinds of applications you can create with this library. The core idea is straightforward: you set up a terminal window, then repeatedly draw your interface to it in a loop while responding to user input like keyboard presses. Ratatui provides the building blocks, widgets for displaying text, tables, charts, lists, progress bars, and more, along with layout tools to position them on screen. You describe what you want to show each frame, and Ratatui handles rendering it to the terminal. It doesn't try to automatically redraw things when data changes, instead, your application decides exactly what to display each time. The library comes with a collection of ready-to-use widgets like paragraphs, tables, bar charts, calendars, and scrollbars. You combine these with a layout system to split your screen into areas and position widgets inside them. You can also style text with colors, bold, italics, and other attributes. Underneath, Ratatui abstracts away differences between terminal backends so your code works across Windows, macOS, and Linux. This is a community continuation of an older Rust project called tui-rs, which was no longer being maintained. The project is actively developed and well-documented, with step-by-step guides, working examples, and an API reference. It's useful for anyone building CLI tools, system monitoring dashboards, data viewers, or other interactive terminal applications in Rust. You'd use it if you want a polished, interactive text UI without dealing with web technologies or graphical frameworks.