Ratatui
Hacker ApprovedThe most recommended of 14 terminal UI libraries
Rust library for building terminal user interfaces, praised for easy layout and nice results. Main caveat: only a dozen built-in widgets, so basics need third-party dependencies.
Rust library for building terminal user interfaces, praised for easy layout and nice results. Main caveat: only a dozen built-in widgets, so basics need third-party dependencies.
63 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 57
- criticize it
- 6
- approval share
- 90%
Recommended in 12 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 57 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 9.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 12 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Easy, quick TUI development
“Ratatui and such allow you to write a TUI really quickly without needing to deal with VT100 arcana.”
Comment from 3 May 2026 in “Why TUIs Are Back” “frameworks, available for a range of languages, that make it easy to create nice-looking TUIs”
Comment from 4 May 2026 in “Why TUIs Are Back” “it's pretty trivial to set up a TUI with bubbletea or ratatui”
Comment from 3 May 2026 in “Why TUIs Are Back” Works well with AI and LLMs
“It's great for humans and LLMs, because the friction of using it just disappears.”
Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Software Survival 3.0” “Claude can make beautiful ones with a little ratatui action super fast”
Comment from 13 Feb 2026 in “Building a TUI is easy now” “good success with Claude building snappy TUIs in Rust with Ratatui”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “Claude Opus 4.6” Rich widgets and layout
“Ratatui really is the best of the bunch. It has layout, accessibility, nice and easy user interface.”
Comment from 7 Nov 2025 in “Ratatui – App Showcase” “Textual and Ratatui already blur that line with mouse support and rich widgets”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool” Used in production apps
“At Copper Robotics we use it for our monitoring console, it is so easy to just ssh on a robot”
Comment from 5 Nov 2025 in “Bluetui – A TUI for managing Bluetooth on Linux” “The library is good enough that Sidekiq is using it to build their TUI.”
Comment from 21 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: Do you have any evidence that agentic coding works?”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Needs third-party dependency per widget
“the way it's architected, you need to take on third party dependencies for each individual widget”
Comment from 6 Nov 2025 in “Ratatui – App Showcase” “taking on a new dep for each widget seemed excessive”
Comment from 6 Nov 2025 in “Ratatui – App Showcase” Few built-in widgets, basics missing
“there are only a dozen included widgets, so very basic things are left to third parties”
Comment from 6 Nov 2025 in “Ratatui – App Showcase” “creating JUST a simple damn button is a nightmare”
Comment from 15 Jun 2026 in “The state of building user interfaces in Rust” Considered bloated
“doesn't use bloated frameworks like Ratatui/Bubbletea etc”
Comment from 12 May 2026 in “What do you NOT like about Cursor / VSCode / Claude Code desktop / Codex / etc.?” “I do wonder how much bloat there is”
Comment from 6 Nov 2025 in “Ratatui – App Showcase”
Other terminal UI libraries people recommend
The four most recommended other terminal UI libraries, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RatatuiThis page | 57 | 6 | 90% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Bubble Tea | 37 | 16 | 70% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Textual | 34 | 2 | 94% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Turbo Vision | 26 | 5 | 84% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Ink | 13 | 21 | 38% | 8 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 83 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I really like the work and effort that flows into ratatui and it's ecosystem”
“All my cli offer a ratatui dashboard mode, and about 50% of the dashboard mode end up as a status dashboard down the road”
“There are fantastic TUI frameworks for Rust, like Ratatui”
“ratatui was still an excellent choice over a year and a half ago.”
“creating JUST a simple damn button is a nightmare”
“its written in ratatui and we did try to go the extra mile”
“doesn't use bloated frameworks like Ratatui/Bubbletea etc”
“Ratatui package is one big propellor for tui use and creation nowadays”
“Notcurses (C++) and Ratatui (Rust) did help ncurses (C) a lot.”
“frameworks, available for a range of languages, that make it easy to create nice-looking TUIs”
“Ratatui and such allow you to write a TUI really quickly without needing to deal with VT100 arcana.”
“it's pretty trivial to set up a TUI with bubbletea or ratatui”
“my Go TUI experience is older than me playing with Rust's ratatui”
“Textual and Ratatui already blur that line with mouse support and rich widgets”
“great toolsets for their respective languages BubbleTea / Textualize / Ratatui”
“Claude can make beautiful ones with a little ratatui action super fast”
“good success with Claude building snappy TUIs in Rust with Ratatui”
“It's great for humans and LLMs, because the friction of using it just disappears.”
“I love ratatui, having it available on embedded is very cool!”
“you have full control over when you enter or exit raw mode, so your TUI can support opening an external editor”
“Landing page is great: informative, visual example, clear code example. Love it”
“The library is good enough that Sidekiq is using it to build their TUI.”
“Bubbletea (Go) or Ratatui (Rust) which both are better suited for this”
“it was able to read the ANSI and figure out that a snapshot had changed”
“I heavily designed and reviewed. I was having a lot of fun, and part of the reason I took deprecations and releases seriously was because I hoped to get users.”
“Ratatui itself has a lot of much nicer AI generated code in it since then”
“It's a rendering library that uses the immediate-mode paradigm.”
“Kind of love the renaissance of all the TUI apps around Rust with Ratatui”
“I feel comfortable reading and using code and ideas from either side”
“The framework now ships with native list view support and improved terminal capabilities”
“Ratatui really is the best of the bunch. It has layout, accessibility, nice and easy user interface.”
“Ratatui is awesome, but I haven't found a widget library and event loop that I like”
“there are only a dozen included widgets, so very basic things are left to third parties”
“taking on a new dep for each widget seemed excessive”
“I do wonder how much bloat there is”
“ratatui-rs became my framework of choice for building its first TUI”
“Ratatui is awesome! Just built a little chat client with it, tons of fun.”
“the way it's architected, you need to take on third party dependencies for each individual widget”
“it's what I'll reach out for if I need semi-complex TUIs in Rust”
“At Copper Robotics we use it for our monitoring console, it is so easy to just ssh on a robot”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.