The terminal is experiencing a renaissance. Far from being a relic of the past, the command line has evolved into a rich, interactive environment with beautiful interfaces, keyboard-driven workflows, and surprising depth. Text-based User Interfaces (TUIs) bridge the gap between the efficiency of the command line and the usability of graphical applications—they’re fast, lightweight, work over SSH, and often pack more features than their GUI counterparts.
Here’s a tour of 12 remarkable TUIs that showcase just how powerful and polished the terminal can be.
1. Below — Time-Traveling Resource Monitor
Repository: facebookincubator/below
Below is an interactive system monitor for modern Linux that does something most monitoring tools can’t: it lets you travel back in time. While you can view live system data like htop or atop, Below also includes a record mode that continuously captures system metrics and a replay mode to examine historical data from any point in the past.
What makes Below particularly powerful is its deep integration with modern Linux features. It displays cgroup hierarchy information, pressure stall information (PSI), and supports multiple output formats including JSON, CSV, and OpenMetrics for scripting. You can even create snapshots of historical data for later replay or sharing.
The name “Below” comes from the developers rejecting many of atop‘s design decisions—it’s a fresh take on system monitoring with a focus on historical data analysis.
Best for: System administrators and SREs who need to investigate past performance issues or track down intermittent problems.
2. Posting — The API Client That Lives in Your Terminal
Repository: darrenburns/posting
Posting is a powerful HTTP client built for the terminal, offering a Postman-like experience without leaving the command line. Built with Textual, it supports environments and variables, syntax highlighting via tree-sitter, Vim keybindings, and customizable themes.
What sets Posting apart is its local-first approach—requests are stored as simple YAML files, making them easy to version control and share. You can import cURL commands by pasting them into the URL bar, export requests as cURL commands, and even import from Postman and OpenAPI specifications. Advanced users will appreciate the ability to run Python code before and after requests for complex automation.
Best for: Developers, API engineers, and anyone who prefers keyboard-centric workflows over clicking around in a GUI.
3. Oxker — Docker Container Management Made Simple
Oxker is a lightweight TUI for viewing and controlling Docker containers. Built in Rust with the Ratatui framework, it provides a clean interface for managing your containers without switching to a web UI or memorizing endless docker commands.
You can scroll through container lists, view logs, start, stop, and restart containers—all with keyboard shortcuts. The interface is panel-based, with tab navigation and Vim-style keybindings for efficient control. Oxker runs directly from the terminal and can be installed via Cargo, Docker, Homebrew, or the AUR.
Best for: Developers and DevOps engineers who want a quick, keyboard-friendly way to manage Docker containers without leaving the terminal.
4. Durdraw — ASCII and ANSI Art Editor
Durdraw is a versatile ASCII, Unicode, and ANSI art editor for Unix-like systems. Inspired by classic DOS software like TheDraw, Aciddraw, and Pablodraw, it brings the golden era of ANSI art to modern terminals with a contemporary twist.
The tool supports frame-based animation, 256 and 16 color modes, terminal mouse input, DOS ANSI art viewing, CP437 and Unicode mixing, HTML and mIRC color output, and customizable themes. You can export your creations as PNG or animated GIF using the ansilove tool. Durdraw also includes a unique feature called “durfetch” that displays system information in ASCII art style using neofetch.
Best for: Digital artists, retro computing enthusiasts, and anyone who appreciates the aesthetic of ANSI and ASCII art.
5. Superfile — A Modern Terminal File Manager
Superfile is a “pretty fancy and modern terminal file manager” that brings a polished, visual experience to file navigation. Written in Go, it offers a multi-panel interface with support for themes, plugins, and extensive keyboard shortcuts.
The tool makes common file operations—browsing, copying, moving, deleting—feel intuitive and visually pleasing. It’s cross-platform, running on macOS, Linux, and Windows, with support for installation via Homebrew, Winget, Scoop, and a one-line install script.
Best for: Users who want a modern, visually appealing file manager that works entirely in the terminal.
6. Chess-TUI — Play Chess in Your Terminal
Repository: thomas-mauran/chess-tui
Chess-TUI brings the ancient game of chess to the modern terminal. Built in Rust, it lets you play locally against a friend, against any UCI chess engine (including Stockfish), or online via Lichess integration.
The interface is clean and responsive, with arrow keys or Vim-style h/j/k/l for cursor movement, space to select pieces, and a full help menu accessible with ?. You can customize skins, adjust engine depth and difficulty, and even configure sound. Lichess integration means you can play online opponents directly from your terminal.
Best for: Chess players who want a distraction-free, keyboard-driven chess experience, and developers who appreciate Rust’s performance.
7. Gum — Glamorous Shell Scripts
Gum is a tool for writing glamorous shell scripts—it brings interactive, polished UI elements to your bash scripts without writing any Go code. Built by the Charm team (creators of Bubble Tea and Lip Gloss), Gum provides ready-to-use utilities for prompting users, choosing options, confirming actions, and more.
Commands like gum choose, gum input, gum write, and gum confirm make it trivial to build interactive scripts that feel professional and polished. The example in the README shows how to build a Conventional Commits helper in just a few lines of code.
Best for: Anyone who writes shell scripts and wants to make them more user-friendly and visually appealing.
8. Gurk — Signal Messenger Client for the Terminal
Gurk is a Signal Messenger client that lives entirely in your terminal. On first run, it displays a QR code to link as a new device, then gives you full access to your Signal conversations from the command line.
The interface is keyboard-driven with intuitive navigation: Ctrl+j/k to switch channels, Enter to send messages, Alt+Enter to toggle multi-line input mode, and Alt+y to copy messages to the clipboard. It supports emoji reactions, muting channels, and even opening URLs from messages.
Best for: Privacy-conscious users, terminal enthusiasts, and anyone who wants to stay connected without leaving the command line.
9. Caligula — User-Friendly Disk Imaging
Caligula is a lightweight, user-friendly TUI for imaging disks—burning ISO files to USB drives and other storage media. It solves the anxiety of disk imaging with rich confirmation dialogs, progress graphs, and safety checks.
The tool lists attached disks with size and model information, decompresses input files in various formats (gz, bz2, xz, lz4, zst), validates hashes before burning, and verifies the disk after writing. It can even prompt for sudo/doas/su if you forgot to run as root. All this comes in a binary under 5MB.
Best for: Anyone who needs to create bootable USB drives or write disk images, especially those who want to avoid accidentally nuking the wrong disk.
10. GopherTube — YouTube Client for the Terminal
Repository: krishnassh/gophertube
GopherTube is a terminal YouTube client that lets you search for and watch videos directly from the command line. It scrapes YouTube directly (no API key needed), uses mpv for playback, and features a clean Bubble Tea interface.
You can search for videos, play them with mpv, download videos with quality selection using yt-dlp, and even browse a downloads menu with thumbnail previews. The interface is keyboard-driven with arrow keys, Enter, Tab, and Esc for navigation. It’s particularly useful for low-spec machines that struggle with running YouTube in a full web browser.
Best for: Users who want a lightweight, keyboard-driven YouTube experience, especially on older or resource-constrained hardware.
11. SC-IM — Spreadsheet Calculator Improvised
Repository: andmarti1424/sc-im
SC-IM is a powerful, vim-like spreadsheet calculator for the terminal. Based on the original sc spreadsheet by James Gosling and Mark Weiser, it brings modern features to the classic terminal spreadsheet.
It supports 65,536 rows and 702 columns (expandable to over a million rows), UNDO/REDO, CSV/TAB/XLSX import/export, ODS import, and Markdown export. The Vim-style keybindings make cell navigation and editing feel natural for Vim users: j/k/h/l to move, yy to copy, p to paste, and u to undo. Additional features include color customization, scripting with Lua, GNUPlot integration, and wide character support for multiple alphabets.
Best for: Power users who want a terminal-based spreadsheet with Vim-like efficiency, and anyone who needs to work with data without leaving the command line.
12. Browsh — A Modern Text-Based Browser
Browsh is a fully interactive, modern text-based browser that renders web pages to terminals. Unlike traditional text browsers like Lynx or elinks, Browsh is backed by a real browser—headless Firefox—which means it can handle JavaScript, CSS, and modern web apps.
The use case is compelling: run Browsh on a server with a fast internet connection, then access it via SSH from a low-bandwidth connection. This offloads the heavy lifting of web browsing to the server and dramatically reduces bandwidth usage. It’s also useful for saving battery on laptops by running the browser elsewhere. Browsh supports most keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures you’d expect from a desktop browser.
Best for: Users on slow connections, SSH enthusiasts, developers working on remote servers, and anyone who wants to browse the modern web from the terminal.
Final Thoughts
These 12 TUIs demonstrate the incredible diversity and capability of modern terminal applications. From system monitoring to web browsing, from API testing to playing chess, the terminal has evolved into a rich environment that rivals—and in many cases surpasses—graphical applications in both efficiency and functionality.
What’s particularly exciting is the ecosystem’s momentum. Many of these tools are built with modern frameworks like Ratatui (Rust), Bubble Tea (Go), and Textual (Python), making TUI development more accessible than ever. The result is a new generation of terminal applications that are fast, beautiful, and a joy to use.
Whether you’re a developer, system administrator, or just someone who spends a lot of time in the terminal, these tools are worth exploring. They might just change how you think about the command line.