Frontend developers appreciate the importance of UI design as it’s a critical part of developing an app. With terminal-based tools, visual design might not be foremost in a developer’s mind. While the design is constrained, it’s still important to communicate terminal output in the best way possible.
Adding color and styling to terminal output helps make a command line interface more engaging, informative, and easy to understand.
This roundup showcases the best tools for terminal string styling.
Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks-style ratings chart. Only free and open source software is eligible for inclusion.
Let’s explore the 12 tools at hand. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, together with links to relevant resources.
| Terminal String Styling Tools | |
|---|---|
| Rich | Python library for rich text and beautiful formatting |
| Chalk | Bills itself as “Terminal string styling done right” |
| picocolors | Tiny and fast library for terminal output formatting |
| yoctocolors | Small and fast command-line coloring package |
| yachalk | Clone of Chalk written in Python |
| kleur | Node.js library for formatting terminal text with ANSI colors |
| colorette | Set your terminal text color and styles |
| sty | String styling for your terminal |
| termcolor | ANSI color formatting for output in the terminal |
| colored | Simple Python library for color and formatting in terminal |
| ansicolors | ANSI colors for Python |
| ansi-colors | Add ANSI colors to terminal text |
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