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ratatui_ruby is a Ruby wrapper for Ratatui. It allows you to cook up Terminal User Interfaces in Ruby. ratatui_ruby is a community wrapper that is not affiliated with the Ratatui team.
Why RatatuiRuby? — Native Rust performance, zero runtime overhead, and Ruby's expressiveness. See how we compare to CharmRuby, raw Rust, and Go.
Please join the announcement forum to stay up-to-date on new releases and announcements. See the trunk branch for pre-release updates.
RatatuiRuby:Core engine • Rooibos:MVU architecture • Kit:Component architecture (Planned) • DSL:Glimmer syntax (Planned) • Framework:Omakase framework (Planned) • UI:Polished widgets (Planned) • UI Pro:More polished widgets (Planned)
Get Started:Quickstart • Examples ⸺ Stay Informed:Announcements • FAQ ⸺ Reach Out:Forum • Bug Tracker
Get Started:Contributing Guide • Code of Conduct ⸺ Stay Informed:Announcements • Project History ⸺ Reach Out:Forum • Bug Tracker
ratatui_ruby is designed to run on everything Ruby does, including:
- GNU/Linux, macOS, Windows, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD; and
- x86_64 (AMD, Intel) and ARM (Apple Silicon, Raspberry Pi).
We support the latest minor version of every non-eol Ruby version, including Ruby 4.
Add this line to your application's Gemfile:
gem"ratatui_ruby"And then execute:
bundle installOr install it yourself with:
gem install ratatui_rubyratatui_ruby uses an immediate-mode API. You describe your UI using Ruby objects and call draw in a loop.
RatatuiRuby.rundo |tui|
loopdotui.drawdo |frame|
frame.render_widget(tui.paragraph(text: "Hello, Ratatui! Press 'q' to quit.",alignment: :center,block: tui.block(title: "My Ruby TUI App",borders: [:all],border_style: {fg: "cyan"})),frame.area)endcasetui.poll_eventin{type: :key,code: "q"} | {type: :key,code: "c",modifiers: ["ctrl"]}breakelsenilendendend
For a full tutorial, see the Quickstart. For an explanation of the application architecture, see Application Architecture.
ratatui_ruby gives you 20+ widgets out of the box:
| Category | Widgets |
|---|---|
| Data Display | Table, List, Chart, Bar Chart, Sparkline, Calendar |
| Layout | Block, Tabs, Scrollbar, Center, Overlay, Clear |
| Input | Gauge, Line Gauge |
| Text | Paragraph, Rich Text (Spans + Lines), Cursor |
| Canvas | Shapes (Line, Circle, Rectangle, Map), Custom Drawing |
Plus: flexible layouts with constraints, full keyboard/mouse/paste/resize events, snapshot testing, and hex/RGB/256-color support.
| Resource | Description |
|---|---|
| Quickstart | Get running in 5 minutes |
| Widget Gallery | Every widget with examples |
| Application Architecture | Patterns for scaling your app |
| API Reference | Full RDoc documentation |
| Wiki | Guides and community resources |
Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub. This project is intended to be a safe, productive collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Code of Conduct.
Issues for the underlying Rust library should be filed at ratatui/ratatui.
Want to help develop ratatui_ruby? Check out the contribution guide on the wiki.
Note: Active development happens on the trunk branch. Use trunk if you are a contributor or want the latest cutting-edge features. stable is for stable releases only.
ratatui_ruby is copyright 2025, Kerrick Long.
The library is LGPL-3.0-or-later: you can use it in proprietary applications, but you must share changes you make to ratatui_ruby itself. Documentation snippets and widget examples are MIT-0: copy and use them without attribution.
Documentation is CC-BY-SA-4.0. Build tooling and full app examples are AGPL-3.0-or-later. See each file's SPDX comment for specifics.
Some parts of this program are copied from other sources under appropriate reuse licenses, and the copyright belongs to their respective owners. See the REUSE Specification – Version 3.3 for details.
This program was created with significant assistance from multiple LLMs. The process was human-controlled through creative prompts, with human contributions to each commit. See commit footers for model attribution. declare-ai.org