explaingit

textualize/textual

📈 Trending★ 35,952PythonAudience · developerComplexity · 3/5ActiveLicenseSetup · easy

TLDR

Python framework for building interactive terminal applications with widgets, styling, and optional web browser support, no low-level terminal handling required.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((Textual))
    What it does
      Terminal UI framework
      Web browser support
      Ready-made widgets
    How it works
      Component-based design
      CSS-like styling
      Asynchronous under hood
    Use cases
      Internal dashboards
      Config tools
      Monitoring interfaces
    Tech stack
      Python
      Cross-platform
      pip installable
    Developer tools
      Dev console
      Network sharing
      Debugging support

Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Build an internal dashboard that displays live metrics and logs in a terminal window.

USE CASE 2

Create a configuration tool with forms, dropdowns, and buttons that runs on any machine with Python.

USE CASE 3

Deploy a monitoring interface accessible via web browser using textual serve without requiring installation.

USE CASE 4

Develop a data-entry application with tables, text inputs, and validation that works on macOS, Linux, and Windows.

Tech stack

Pythonasyncio

Getting it running

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min
MIT license, use freely for any purpose, including commercial, as long as you keep the copyright notice.

In plain English

Textual is a Python framework for building full-featured applications that run inside a terminal window, the text-based command-line interface you get when you open a shell or command prompt. The problem it solves is that writing polished, interactive terminal interfaces in Python is historically difficult and requires low-level handling of cursor positions and keyboard events. Textual provides a higher-level API with ready-made widgets like buttons, data tables, text inputs, tree views, and more, letting developers build complex interfaces with far less effort. Textual borrows concepts from web development: interfaces are composed of components (similar to how web UIs are built from HTML elements), and styling is done with a CSS-like syntax. This makes the model familiar to developers who have built web apps. The framework is asynchronous under the hood, meaning it can handle multiple tasks at once without blocking the interface, but you can use it without worrying about async programming if you do not need that feature. A notable capability is that the same application can run either in a terminal or in a web browser. Using the textual serve command, a Textual app becomes accessible over the network, which means you can share a terminal tool via a URL without the user needing to install anything. The project also includes developer tooling: a separate dev console connects to a running app from another terminal window and shows log output for debugging. Someone building an internal dashboard, a configuration tool, a monitoring interface, or any interactive program that needs to run in a terminal would use Textual. The tech stack is pure Python, compatible with macOS, Linux, and Windows, installed via pip.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Show me how to create a simple Textual app with a button and text input that prints to the console when clicked.
Prompt 2
How do I style a Textual widget using CSS-like syntax to change colors and spacing?
Prompt 3
Walk me through building a Textual data table that displays rows and columns with sorting.
Prompt 4
How do I use textual serve to share a terminal app over the network so others can access it in a browser?
Prompt 5
Show me how to add a dev console to debug a running Textual application.
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Generated 2026-05-18 · Model: sonnet-4-6 · Verify against the repo before relying on details.