# dankamongmen/notcurses

blingful character graphics/TUI library. definitely not curses.

Repository: https://github.com/dankamongmen/notcurses
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/notcurses
Homepage: https://nick-black.com/dankwiki/index.php/Notcurses
Language: C
License: NOASSERTION
License Family: other
Topics: terminal-emulators, ncurses, cli, terminal, c
Last push: 2026-05-18T14:02:16+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 76/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:39:23.370411+00:00)
- activity 83, release rhythm 54, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 2482, "days_push": 107, "days_rel": 309, "gap_med": 4, "n_releases_24m": 8}
- flags: no_license
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 4680, forks 159 (observed 2026-08-28T04:08:56.839496+00:00)

## What it is
Notcurses is a C library (with C++, Rust, and Python bindings) for building complex, vibrant textual user interfaces on modern terminal emulators, supporting 24-bit color, Unicode, multimedia, and threads. It is not a source-compatible replacement for NCURSES, but enables effects impossible with it.

## Use cases
- build rich TUI applications with truecolor and Unicode
- render images and video in the terminal
- create animated terminal dashboards
- write terminal apps with transparency and sprite effects
- replace ncurses for a modern terminal UI library
- build interactive CLI tools with multimedia support

## When to choose
- you need vivid colors, images, or video in a terminal app
- you're starting a new TUI project and aren't tied to curses compatibility
- you need Unicode, bidirectional text, and wide glyph support
- you want C, C++, Rust, or Python bindings for terminal UIs

## When to avoid
- you need a drop-in X/Open Curses-compatible replacement for existing ncurses code
- you must support very old or minimal terminal emulators
- you need a lightweight dependency for simple text UIs

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: active
- function: ui-components, graphics, terminal-ui, image-processing, video-processing
- domain: developer-tools, cross-platform
- platform: windows, bsd, c, cpp, python, rust, cli
- tags: tui, ncurses-alternative, character-graphics, unicode, multimedia, terminal-graphics, command-line, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- dankamongmen/notcurses (main) score 76

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:56.839496+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:19:19.998408+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/dankamongmen/notcurses (fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:56.839496+00:00, sha 037c46e15e4a)
  - homepage: https://nick-black.com/dankwiki/index.php/Notcurses (fetched 2026-08-29T09:03:31.352421+00:00, sha 78893adef3c8)
  - site_page: https://nick-black.com/dankwiki/index.php?title=dankwiki%3AAbout (fetched 2026-08-29T09:03:31.362197+00:00, sha 6bce1a129215)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.