TextUI

A SwiftUI-inspired framework for building expressive terminal UIs in Swift, with zero dependencies.

Why? Why not! It makes building fancy terminal apps super fun.

Quick Start

Add TextUI to your Package.swift:

dependencies: [
    .package(url: "https://github.com/bensyverson/TextUI.git", branch: "main"),
]

Create a terminal app:

import TextUI

@main
struct HelloApp: App {
    var body: some View {
        VStack(spacing: 1) {
            Text("Hello, TextUI!", style: .bold)
            Button("Quit") { Application.quit() }
                .keyboardShortcut("q", modifiers: .control)
            CommandBar()
        }
        .padding(1)
        .border()
    }
}

Features

• Declarative views — Text, HStack, VStack, ZStack, Spacer, Divider, Color, Canvas
• Interactive controls — Button, TextField, Toggle, Picker with Tab/Shift-Tab focus navigation
• Containers — ScrollView, Table, TabView
• State management — View-local @State and shared state via @EnvironmentObject
• Modifiers — .padding(), .border(), .foregroundColor(), .background(), .frame()
• Command system — Global keyboard shortcuts, CommandBar, and Ctrl+P command palette
• Animation — ProgressView with spinner and bar styles
• Terminal handling — Raw mode, alternate screen, resize detection, 24-bit color with automatic downgrade

Documentation

Browse the documentation online, or check out the DocC catalog at Sources/TextUI/Documentation.docc/. Key articles:

• Getting Started — Get up to speed on the core concepts quickly
• SwiftUI Differences — Coming from SwiftUI? Read this first.
• Focus System — Learn how TextUI approaches focus and keyboard navigation
• StateManagement — Observe and interact with local or shared state
• Animation — Create animations using TextUI's global @AnimationTick

You can generate the API documentation with DocC:

swift package generate-documentation --target TextUI

# Serve the docs:
swift package --disable-sandbox preview-documentation --target TextUI

Key guides:

• Getting Started — Package setup, creating an app, adding views and state
• Views — Catalog of all built-in views with examples
• Focus and Input — Keyboard navigation, @FocusState, key event handling
• Command System — Global shortcuts, CommandBar, command palette
• TextUI vs SwiftUI — Key differences for SwiftUI developers

Requirements

• Swift 6.2+
• macOS 13+ or Linux (glibc)

Development

Enable the pre-commit hook (runs swiftformat lint + tests):

git config core.hooksPath scripts

Demo App

Run the showcase demo:

cd Examples/Demo
swift run

The demo includes tabs for form controls, a data table, progress indicators, a log which updates via an async process, and a tab of the remaining layout primitives.

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License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

Copyright (c) 2026 Ben Syverson