explaingit

textualize/rich

Analysis updated 2026-06-20

56,273PythonAudience · developerComplexity · 2/5Setup · easy

TLDR

A pure-Python library that adds color, formatted tables, animated progress bars, and syntax highlighting to terminal output with minimal code, replacing plain print statements.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((Rich))
    What it does
      Colored terminal output
      Formatted tables
      Animated progress bars
      Syntax highlighting
    Features
      Markdown rendering
      Exception tracebacks
      Object inspection
      Jupyter notebook support
    Tech stack
      Pure Python 3
      No external dependencies
      pip install
    Use cases
      CLI tool output
      Progress reporting
      Debugging scripts
      Developer tools
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Code map

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What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Add an animated progress bar to a long-running script so users can see how much work is left and the estimated time remaining.

USE CASE 2

Print API response data or config dictionaries as formatted tables with aligned columns that are easy to read in the terminal.

USE CASE 3

Replace plain Python tracebacks with rich error displays that show local variable values at each stack frame for faster debugging.

USE CASE 4

Display syntax-highlighted source code or rendered Markdown documentation directly inside a terminal window.

What is it built with?

Python

How does it compare?

textualize/richageitgey/face_recognitionfoundationagents/openmanus
Stars56,27356,38756,043
LanguagePythonPythonPython
Setup difficultyeasymoderatemoderate
Complexity2/53/53/5
Audiencedeveloperdeveloperdeveloper

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min

In plain English

Rich is a Python library that makes terminal output beautiful and informative. The default terminal experience in Python, plain white text, no structure, is hard to read for complex data, long logs, or progress-heavy scripts. Rich solves this by giving your terminal programs color, layout, and formatting with minimal extra code. The way it works is straightforward: Rich provides a drop-in replacement for Python's built-in print function that accepts markup tags similar to HTML. Writing [bold red]warning[/bold red] renders that word in bold red in the terminal. Beyond simple text styling, Rich can render formatted tables where rows and columns line up cleanly, animated progress bars that update in place to show how much of a long task is done, syntax-highlighted source code with proper color coding for the language, Markdown documents rendered with headings and emphasis, and exception tracebacks that display the local variable values at each stack frame so debugging is much easier. It also includes an inspect function that pretty-prints any Python object showing its attributes and methods in a structured way. Rich adapts to the terminal's capabilities: it renders 24-bit color where available, falls back gracefully on older terminals, and also works in Jupyter notebooks without any configuration. It supports Windows, macOS, and Linux. You would use Rich any time you are building a command-line tool and want the output to be readable, for progress reporting during a long computation, for printing configuration data or API responses in a structured way, for improving developer tools and scripts that other people will run, or for making your own debugging output easier to scan. The tech stack is pure Python 3, installable via pip, with no external dependencies.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Using Rich, write a Python script that downloads 50 files and shows a progress bar with the current filename, percentage complete, and estimated time remaining.
Prompt 2
How do I use Rich to print a formatted table of database records with colored headers and alternating row shading?
Prompt 3
Show me how to use Rich to display a live-updating terminal dashboard with multiple panels showing different metrics that refresh every second.
Prompt 4
Write a Python logging handler that uses Rich to print log messages with color-coded severity levels and formatted timestamps.
Prompt 5
How do I use Rich's inspect function to explore an unknown Python object and see all its public attributes and methods in a structured, readable format?

Frequently asked questions

What is rich?

A pure-Python library that adds color, formatted tables, animated progress bars, and syntax highlighting to terminal output with minimal code, replacing plain print statements.

What language is rich written in?

Mainly Python. The stack also includes Python.

How hard is rich to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated easy, with roughly 5min to a first successful run.

Who is rich for?

Mainly developer.

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