What it does
Ratatui is a Rust crate for building terminal user interfaces, rather than a ready-made terminal application. Developers compose widgets such as paragraphs, tables, charts, gauges, and lists with layouts to render dashboards, command-line tools, games, and other text-based interfaces. Its documentation provides a Cargo setup path, starter templates, tutorials, and API references. Crossterm is the default backend, with other terminal backends available through feature selection.
Start with a small terminal app
The official templates and tutorials give Rust developers a path from a Hello World screen to a counter app or JSON editor. In the repository’s quickstart example, the application initializes and restores the terminal, draws a frame, and reads key events; Ratatui provides the UI rendering library, while the developer writes the app’s event loop and behavior.
The docs cover widgets, layouts, examples, and application patterns. For a new project, the installation guide uses Crossterm by default and documents Termion, Termwiz, and Termina as alternatives. Ratatui 0.30.2 requires Rust 1.88 or newer; the guide also advises matching a direct Crossterm dependency to Ratatui’s selected version.
Ratatui is an MIT-licensed Rust crate for building terminal UIs, not a hosted service or a ready-made application. The pages checked establish the project’s license, but not prices for paid support or hosting. No application was built or tested for this listing.
Strengths
- A Rust library for text-based terminal interfaces, including command-line applications, dashboards, and interactive console programs.
- Official templates, examples, and tutorials cover starter screens and more involved applications.
- The installation guide documents Crossterm by default and optional Termion, Termwiz, and Termina backends.
Watch out for
- Ratatui 0.30.2 requires Rust 1.88 or newer.
- As a UI library, it leaves application behavior and the terminal event loop to the developer.
Best for
- Rust developers building terminal-based command-line interfaces or dashboards
- Teams that want official starter templates, examples, and tutorials for a Rust TUI
- Projects that need to choose among the documented terminal backends
Sources
- ratatui/ratatui: Rust crate for terminal user interfaces (Oct 25, 2026)
- Installation | Ratatui (Oct 25, 2026)
- Tutorials | Ratatui (Oct 25, 2026)
- ratatui/LICENSE at main · ratatui/ratatui · GitHub (Oct 25, 2026)