# Textual

34 Hacker News commenters recommended Textual and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Python library for terminal UIs; people praise its widgets, polish and ease of use. Main caveat: a single maintainer and a stale roadmap.

## Why people recommend it

- Easy to build modern-looking TUIs (5 comments): "frameworks, available for a range of languages, that make it easy to create nice-looking TUIs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48004007)) "some good libraries/frameworks (e.g. [1][2]) exist to make a modern-looking UX" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46431461)) "other frameworks that make it easy to create TUI eg Textual (in Python)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47012269))
- Rich features and widgets (4 comments): "Textual is A++. Feels a bit less snappy than Ink, but it makes up in all things with its immense feature-set." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46700910)) "Textual and Ratatui already blur that line with mouse support and rich widgets" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47365084)) "Textual offers incredibly impressive terminal experiences" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46370017))
- Fast rendering, quick script UIs (2 comments): "Textual can generate an entire frame in less than a 60th of a second" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46376725)) "it makes it really easy to get a super fast little UI for scripts" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46370976))
- Works well with Claude (3 comments): "I've had pretty good success with Textual+Claude so have a few colleagues." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47364971)) "As TUI library I use Textual which claude handles quite well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47088368)) "with textual doing the heavy lifting" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48008558))

## What people warn about

- Single maintainer, stale roadmap (1 comments): "it's maintained by a single guy, and the roadmap hasn't been updated since 2023" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46715024))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Ratatui](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ratatui.md): 57 recommend
- [Bubble Tea](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bubble-tea.md): 37 recommend
- [Turbo Vision](https://hackerapproved.com/p/turbo-vision.md): 26 recommend
- [Ink](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ink.md): 13 recommend
- [Charm Ruby](https://hackerapproved.com/p/charm-ruby.md): 12 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Textual", https://hackerapproved.com/p/textual/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).