# termbox

Library for writing text-based user interfaces

Repository: https://github.com/nsf/termbox
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/termbox
Homepage: http://code.google.com/p/termbox
Language: C
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2020-08-25T15:20:53+00:00
Link (homepage): http://code.google.com/p/termbox

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 6067, "days_push": 2199, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2009, forks 187 (observed 2026-08-28T04:06:04.972133+00:00)

## What it is
Termbox is a minimalist, cross-platform Go library for building text-based user interfaces in the terminal, abstracting a common subset of terminal features across *nix and Windows. It offers a small, easy-to-learn API, though the project is no longer actively maintained and the author recommends alternatives like tcell.

## Use cases
- build a terminal UI in Go
- write a console-based text editor
- create terminal games like Tetris or Snake
- render dashboards and monitoring views in the terminal
- display images or color charts in a terminal
- build interactive CLI tools with keyboard input handling

## When to choose
- you need a tiny, simple TUI API in Go with minimal learning curve
- you want a cross-platform terminal library covering both Unix and Windows consoles
- you're maintaining or extending an existing termbox-based project

## When to avoid
- you need an actively maintained library with ongoing bug fixes
- you need complex widgets, mouse support, or rich UI features
- you're starting a new Go TUI project — prefer gdamore/tcell

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: maintenance
- function: gui, terminal-ui, developer-tools
- domain: developer-tools, cross-platform
- platform: windows, go, cross-platform, cli
- tags: tui, text-user-interface, terminal, console, minimalist-api, command-line, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- nsf/termbox (main) score 32
- nsf/termbox-go (sdk) score 77

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:04.972133+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 2026-08-29T18:18:41.456380+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/nsf/termbox (fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:04.972133+00:00, sha 675f39bb680a)
  - homepage: http://code.google.com/p/termbox (fetched 2026-08-29T09:01:47.680233+00:00, sha 3cac14702b11)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.