Getting Started

Paste these commands into your favorite terminal on Windows, Mac, or Linux. This will install the Terminal.Gui.Templates, create a new "Hello World" TUI app, and run it.

(Press CTRL-Q to exit the app)

dotnet new --install Terminal.Gui.templates
dotnet new tui -n myproj
cd myproj
dotnet run

Adding Terminal.Gui to a Project

To install Terminal.Gui from Nuget into a .NET Core project, use the dotnet CLI tool with this command.

dotnet add package Terminal.Gui

Using the Templates

Use the Terminal.Gui.Templates.

Sample Usage in C#

The following example shows a basic Terminal.Gui application in C#:

// A simple Terminal.Gui example in C# - using C# 9.0 Top-level statements

using Terminal.Gui;

Application.Run<ExampleWindow> ();

System.Console.WriteLine ($"Username: {((ExampleWindow)Application.Top).usernameText.Text}");

// Before the application exits, reset Terminal.Gui for clean shutdown
Application.Shutdown ();

// Defines a top-level window with border and title
public class ExampleWindow : Window {
	public TextField usernameText;
	
	public ExampleWindow ()
	{
		Title = "Example App (Ctrl+Q to quit)";

		// Create input components and labels
		var usernameLabel = new Label () { 
			Text = "Username:" 
		};

		usernameText = new TextField ("") {
			// Position text field adjacent to the label
			X = Pos.Right (usernameLabel) + 1,

			// Fill remaining horizontal space
			Width = Dim.Fill (),
		};

		var passwordLabel = new Label () {
			Text = "Password:",
			X = Pos.Left (usernameLabel),
			Y = Pos.Bottom (usernameLabel) + 1
		};

		var passwordText = new TextField ("") {
			Secret = true,
			// align with the text box above
			X = Pos.Left (usernameText),
			Y = Pos.Top (passwordLabel),
			Width = Dim.Fill (),
		};

		// Create login button
		var btnLogin = new Button () {
			Text = "Login",
			Y = Pos.Bottom(passwordLabel) + 1,
			// center the login button horizontally
			X = Pos.Center (),
			IsDefault = true,
		};

		// When login button is clicked display a message popup
		btnLogin.Clicked += () => {
			if (usernameText.Text == "admin" && passwordText.Text == "password") {
				MessageBox.Query ("Logging In", "Login Successful", "Ok");
				Application.RequestStop ();
			} else {
				MessageBox.ErrorQuery ("Logging In", "Incorrect username or password", "Ok");
			}
		};

		// Add the views to the Window
		Add (usernameLabel, usernameText, passwordLabel, passwordText, btnLogin);
	}
}

When run the application looks as follows:

Building the Library and Running the Examples

• Windows, Mac, and Linux - Build and run using the .NET SDK command line tools (dotnet build in the root directory). Run UICatalog with dotnet run --project UICatalog.
• Windows - Open Terminal.sln with Visual Studio 202x.