termbox

Termbox

Termbox is a library that provides minimalistic API and abstracts away complexities of creating console/terminal UI applications. It has bindings for C, C++, Go, Rust, and other languages.
Development Terminal User Interfaces
termbox image
terminal tui console cli curses library bindings
Termbox alternatives ➤

Termbox: Minimalistic Console Library

A lightweight library providing a simple API to build console UI applications, with support for multiple programming languages.

What is Termbox?

Termbox is an open-source library that enables developers to build text-based user interfaces that work in console/terminal environments. It provides a simple API and abstracts away many of the complexities involved in creating terminal applications that respond to user input and redraw sections of the screen.

Some key capabilities Termbox provides include:

  • Drawing text characters, lines, rectangles in terminal/console
  • Detecting and responding to keyboard and mouse events
  • Abstracting away terminal capabilities differences across operating systems
  • Supporting 256 color terminals
  • Requiring no dependencies other than a C compiler

Termbox is written in C but has bindings available for various languages including C++, Go, Rust, Python, Haskell, Erlang, and others. This allows using the Termbox capabilities from higher-level languages fairly easily.

It is a lightweight library aiming to fill a niche need for creating responsive text UIs in console/terminal environments. It is not intended to be a full GUI framework for terminal applications. But for creating interactive CLI tools, roguelike games, and other text-based interfaces, Termbox provides a simple way to manage terminal I/O.

Termbox Features

Features

  1. Provides simple API for creating text UIs
  2. Supports multiple platforms like Linux, Windows, OS X
  3. Supports multiple programming languages like C, C++, Go, Rust
  4. Handles keyboard inputs and mouse events
  5. Provides primitive shapes and widgets like text, rectangles, lines
  6. Abstracts away complexities of terminal control and text rendering

Pricing

  • Open Source

Pros

Lightweight and fast

Easy to integrate and use

Cross-platform support

Language bindings make it accessible

Actively maintained and improved

Cons

Limited documentation and examples

Less flexible compared to full GUI frameworks

Lacks some advanced UI features

Not many customization options for appearances

Official Links

Official Website
https://github.com/termbox/termbox2

The Best Termbox Alternatives

Top Development and Terminal User Interfaces and other similar apps like Termbox

Here are some alternatives to Termbox:

Ncurses icon
ncurses
Turbo Vision icon
Turbo Vision
FTXUI icon
FTXUI
Gui.cs icon
Gui.cs
ConsoleGUI icon
ConsoleGUI
Libmabuff icon
libmabuff
Suggest an alternative ❐

Ncurses icon

Ncurses

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Turbo Vision icon

Turbo Vision

Turbo Vision is an object-oriented framework for building text-based user interfaces (TUIs). It was originally developed in the early 1990s by Borland for use in DOS applications.Some key features of Turbo Vision include:A library of widgets like windows, buttons, menus, text boxes, checkboxes, etc. to aid in TUI constructionVirtual screening...
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FTXUI icon

FTXUI

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Gui.cs

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ConsoleGUI

ConsoleGUI is a graphical user interface application designed to make working with console programs, commands, and scripts easier. It provides a GUI window where you can view console output, enter commands and run scripts. Some key features include:Tabbed interface to open multiple consolesCustomizable themes and fontsSave console output to filesSearchable...
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Libmabuff icon

Libmabuff

libmabuff is an open-source C++ library that aims to improve memory allocation performance by buffering allocation and deallocation requests.It works by intercepting calls to memory allocation functions like malloc and free, and buffering these requests instead of passing them directly to the system memory manager. The buffers are then periodically...
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S-Lang

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