Textual
Hacker ApprovedRanked 3 of 14 terminal UI libraries by recommenders
Python library for terminal UIs; people praise its widgets, polish and ease of use. Main caveat: a single maintainer and a stale roadmap.
Python library for terminal UIs; people praise its widgets, polish and ease of use. Main caveat: a single maintainer and a stale roadmap.
36 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 34
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 94%
Recommended in 11 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: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 34 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 17 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 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 to build modern-looking TUIs
“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” “some good libraries/frameworks (e.g. [1][2]) exist to make a modern-looking UX”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “The Signature Flicker” “other frameworks that make it easy to create TUI eg Textual (in Python)”
Comment from 14 Feb 2026 in “Building a TUI is easy now” - Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Toad is a unified experience for AI in the terminal”
- Comment from 22 Aug 2026 in “Stop Making TUIs”
Rich features and widgets
“Textual is A++. Feels a bit less snappy than Ink, but it makes up in all things with its immense feature-set.”
Comment from 21 Jan 2026 in “Claude Chill: Fix Claude Code's Flickering in Terminal” “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” “Textual offers incredibly impressive terminal experiences”
Comment from 23 Dec 2025 in “Toad is a unified experience for AI in the terminal” - Comment from 23 Dec 2025 in “Toad is a unified experience for AI in the terminal”
Fast rendering, quick script UIs
“Textual can generate an entire frame in less than a 60th of a second”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Toad is a unified experience for AI in the terminal” “it makes it really easy to get a super fast little UI for scripts”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Toad is a unified experience for AI in the terminal” Works well with Claude
“I've had pretty good success with Textual+Claude so have a few colleagues.”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool” “As TUI library I use Textual which claude handles quite well”
Comment from 20 Feb 2026 in “I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs” “with textual doing the heavy lifting”
Comment from 4 May 2026 in “Why TUIs Are Back”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Single maintainer, stale roadmap
“it's maintained by a single guy, and the roadmap hasn't been updated since 2023”
Comment from 22 Jan 2026 in “Claude Chill: Fix Claude Code's Flickering in Terminal”
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ratatui | 57 | 6 | 90% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Bubble Tea | 37 | 16 | 70% | 9 | — | Approved |
| TextualThis page | 34 | 2 | 94% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Turbo Vision | 26 | 5 | 84% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Ink | 13 | 21 | 38% | 8 | — | — |
What people said
33 of the 39 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I always keep a healthy skepticism, but I'm hopeful.”
“probably the best of the low ceremony libraries for making TUIs”
“I hate opening Textual application and being dropped into this canvas like state.”
“Yeah Textual, is pretty good. I have been building a CYOA(Choose-your-own-adventure) game using it”
“I'm currently building a winamp clone that works over ssh, using textual”
“Sometime back I have played with Textual TUI framework very neat and good.”
“the many open source projects which offer Markdown support”
“it is a bit slower than my own solution & has similar performance gaps”
“Used these myself and had no issues”
“Used these myself and had no issues.”
“with textual doing the heavy lifting”
“frameworks, available for a range of languages, that make it easy to create nice-looking TUIs”
“They never get out of date.”
“Textual + NHL API = perfection”
“upon resize there is no issue when you use stuff like ink or textual library in python”
“Textual and Ratatui already blur that line with mouse support and rich widgets”
“I've had pretty good success with Textual+Claude so have a few colleagues.”
“As TUI library I use Textual which claude handles quite well”
“other frameworks that make it easy to create TUI eg Textual (in Python)”
“it responds to clicks just fine”
“We love both Bubbletea and Textual”
“it's maintained by a single guy, and the roadmap hasn't been updated since 2023”
“I'm using Textual for my TUI needs, it's very decent.”
“Textual is A++. Feels a bit less snappy than Ink, but it makes up in all things with its immense feature-set.”
“Textual looks really nice, but I usually make web apps so I haven’t tried it for anything serious”
“really pushed forward the Python+terminal ecosystem in the past five years”
“At least for fairly uncomplicated UIs, it seems pretty simple, and has good event hook support.”
“some good libraries/frameworks (e.g. [1][2]) exist to make a modern-looking UX”
“Textual can generate an entire frame in less than a 60th of a second”
“thank you for making Rich and Textual”
“it makes it really easy to get a super fast little UI for scripts”
“Textual offers incredibly impressive terminal experiences”
“Textual, which is currently the best TUI library around”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.