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Getting started

All you need to get started building Textual apps.

Requirements

Textual requires Python 3.7 or later (if you have a choice, pick the most recent Python). Textual runs on Linux, macOS, Windows and probably any OS where Python also runs.

Your platform

Linux (all distros)

All Linux distros come with a terminal emulator that can run Textual apps.

macOS

The default terminal app is limited to 256 colors. We recommend installing a newer terminal such as iterm2, Kitty, or WezTerm.

Windows

The new Windows Terminal runs Textual apps beautifully.

Installation

You can install Textual via PyPI.

If you plan on developing Textual apps, then you should install textual[dev]. The [dev] part installs a few extra dependencies for development.

pip install "textual[dev]"

If you only plan on running Textual apps, then you can drop the [dev] part:

pip install textual

Demo

Once you have Textual installed, run the following to get an impression of what it can do:

python -m textual

If Textual is installed you should see the following:

Textual Demo Textual Demo TOP                                        Widgets                                         Textual widgets are powerful interactive components. Widgets Build your own or use the builtin widgets.  • Input Text / Password input. Rich content • Button Clickable button with a number of styles.  • Switch A switch to toggle between states.▂▂  • DataTable A spreadsheet-like widget for navigating data. Cells may contain text or Rich  renderables. CSS • Tree An generic tree with expandable nodes.  • DirectoryTree A tree of file and folders.  • ... many more planned ... ▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ Usernamewill ▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ ▃▃ ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ PasswordPassword ▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ Login ▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁ ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔  Foo                   Bar                   Baz                   Foo                    Cell (0, 0)           Cell (0, 1)           Cell (0, 2)           Cell (0, 3)            Cell (1, 0)           Cell (1, 1)           Cell (1, 2)           Cell (1, 3)            Cell (2, 0)           Cell (2, 1)           Cell (2, 2)           Cell (2, 3)            Cell (3, 0)           Cell (3, 1)           Cell (3, 2)           Cell (3, 3)            Cell (4, 0)           Cell (4, 1)           Cell (4, 2)           Cell (4, 3)            Cell (5, 0)           Cell (5, 1)           Cell (5, 2)           Cell (5, 3)            Cell (6, 0)           Cell (6, 1)           Cell (6, 2)           Cell (6, 3)            Cell (7, 0)           Cell (7, 1)           Cell (7, 2)           Cell (7, 3)            Cell (8, 0)           Cell (8, 1)           Cell (8, 2)           Cell (8, 3)            Cell (9, 0)           Cell (9, 1)           Cell (9, 2)           Cell (9, 3)          ▂▂  Cell (10, 0)          Cell (10, 1)          Cell (10, 2)          Cell (10, 3)           Cell (11, 0)          Cell (11, 1)          Cell (11, 2)          Cell (11, 3)           Cell (12, 0)          Cell (12, 1)          Cell (12, 2)          Cell (12, 3)           Cell (13, 0)          Cell (13, 1)          Cell (13, 2)          Cell (13, 3)           CTRL+C  Quit  CTRL+B  Sidebar  CTRL+T  Toggle Dark mode  CTRL+S  Screenshot  F1  Notes 

Examples

The Textual repository comes with a number of example apps. To try out the examples, first clone the Textual repository:

git clone https://github.com/Textualize/textual.git
git clone git@github.com:Textualize/textual.git
gh repo clone Textualize/textual

With the repository cloned, navigate to the /examples/ directory where you will find a number of Python files you can run from the command line:

cd textual/examples/
python code_browser.py ../

Textual CLI

If you installed the dev dependencies you have access to the textual CLI command. There are a number of sub-commands which will aid you in building Textual apps.

textual --help

See devtools for more about the textual command.

Need help?

See the help page for how to get help with Textual, or to report bugs.