ZigTUI - Terminal User Interface Library

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Project Overview: ZigTUI is the first full-featured cross-platform TUI framework for Zig — works seamlessly on Windows, Linux, and macOS. Inspired by Ratatui, it provides a simple and composable API for building beautiful, interactive terminal applications.

⭐ 82 stars on GitHub | 👥 50+ users across the Zig community

Features

• Cross-platform support — Windows, Linux, and macOS
• Cell-based rendering with diff algorithm for efficient updates
• Constraint-based layouts for flexible UI design
• Composable widgets — Block, Paragraph, List, Gauge, Table
• Keyboard and mouse event handling
• ANSI color and text styling support
• Kitty Graphics Protocol for image display
• Unicode block fallback for terminals without graphics support
• Explicit memory management — no hidden allocations

Widgets

1. Block — A container with optional border and title
2. Paragraph — Display text with optional wrapping
3. List — A scrollable list of items
4. Gauge — A progress bar component
5. Table — Display tabular data

Graphics Support

ZigTUI now supports image display in terminals using the Kitty Graphics Protocol and more!

What’s New:

• Kitty Graphics Protocol implementation for displaying actual images in the terminal
• Base64 chunked transmission for large images
• Automatic terminal capability detection
• Unicode half-block fallback for terminals without graphics support (Windows Terminal, iTerm2, etc.)
• Built-in BMP decoder for the fallback mode

Terminal Compatibility:

Quick Start

const std = @import("std");
const tui = @import("zigtui");

pub fn main() !void {
    var gpa = std.heap.GeneralPurposeAllocator(.{}){};
    defer _ = gpa.deinit();
    const allocator = gpa.allocator();

    var backend = try tui.backend.init(allocator);
    defer backend.deinit();

    var terminal = try tui.terminal.Terminal.init(allocator, backend.interface());
    defer terminal.deinit();

    // Your TUI code here...
}

Requirements

• Zig 0.15.0 or later
• Windows 10+ or Linux/macOS with ANSI escape sequence support