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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to PNANA - A TUI Text Editor

I’d like to share PNANA , a lightweight TUI editor built with C++ and FTXUI that I’ve been building for personal use and now open-sourced. It’s a minimal, fast terminal-based editor focused on simple coding and editing workflows—no bloated features, just the core functionality for terminal-centric use cases. https://github.com/Cyxuan0311/PNANA Key pragmatic features Lightweight C++ core with FTXUI for smooth TUI rendering, fast startup and low resource usage Basic but solid editing capabilities (syntax highlighting, line numbering, basic navigation) Simple build process…

PNANA is a lightweight terminal-based text editor written in C++ using FTXUI, designed for simple coding and editing workflows in the terminal. It offers syntax highlighting, line numbering, basic navigation, and early… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

  1. 1

    A lightweight text editor written in Lua. Contribute to rxi/lite development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    A hackable, minimal, fast TUI file explorer. Contribute to sayanarijit/xplr development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3
    Kraa 1.0▲359

    Hi HN! Excited to share the public beta of Kraa – a web-based markdown editor. It's aiming to be distraction-free and has strong separation of the document's styling from the experience of writing it — while still alowing for rich customization. Example of a leaf with custom styles: https://kraa.io/kraa/examples/echolibrary Curious about your feedback in hopes of improving Kraa before the planned launch later this year.

    Dec 2025 · kraa.io · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Hi HN, Trogon is a project to generate a TUI for command line apps. It presents the arguments, options, and switches as a form. Editing the form generates a command line, which you can then run with a keypress. I'm a lover of the command line. But I can recall only a fraction of the switches for most commands I use. I would love it if there was a TUI available for most commands. Trogon currently works with Python and the Click library, but I would like it to cover more of the Python ecosystem and also generate TUIs for apps not written in Python. More information in the repository. Let me…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    Author here. I made this little TUI program for managing default applications on the Linux desktop. Maybe some of you will find it useful. Happy to answer any questions.

    Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    A terminal-based text editor written in Rust. Contribute to gchp/iota development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2014 · github.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    PyTermGUI is a highly modular framework offering most of the features one would expect from a GUI library, such as a mature and open Widget API, animations, mouse support and other goodies, right inside the terminal! The markup language is another great feature of the library, and is used by practically all elements of it. It is based on Rich's implementation, but uses a more concise and easier to humanly parse syntax, while being over 10 times faster at parsing due to a long list of optimizations. There is a full Window Manager API included as well, allowing the user to move, resize and…

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    Hi everyone, I have been developing this editor, Ki, for over a year, and have employed it substantially in all kinds of development (including Ki itself) for at least 3 months. I think it is mostly crystallized, thus I'm happy to share it with you today. Its main strength is first-class multi-cursor and structural (syntax) editing, which is a rare combination in the realm of editors (TUI or GUI alike). Hope you'll enjoy it!

    2024 · ki-editor.github.io · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    Last month, I started learning a Python TUI framework called Textual. After working on a 4x4 board game, I made an interactive app to test your CLI text processing skills with 40 beginner to intermediate level exercises. The app is fairly basic in terms of features — only single input file, so no stdin data, multiple files, etc. Most of the exercises in this app is based on my Computing from the Command Line ebook (https://learnbyexample.github.io/cli-computing/preface.html). I hope to improve the TUI app to support all the 200+ exercises sometime next year.

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10FA

    I built Fresh to challenge the status quo that terminal editing must require a steep learning curve or endless configuration. My goal was to create a fast, resource-efficient TUI editor with the usability and features of a modern GUI editor (like a command palette, mouse support, and LSP integration). Core Philosophy: - Ease-of-Use: Fundamentally non-modal. Prioritizes standard keybindings and a minimal learning curve. - Efficiency: Uses a lazy-loading piece tree to avoid loading huge files into RAM - reads only what's needed for user interactions. Coded in Rust. - Extensibility: Uses…

    Dec 2025 · sinelaw.github.io · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    I set about coding my own version of the classic MS-DOS EDIT.COM for GNU/Linux systems four years ago and it this is where the project is at... still rough around the edges but works well with Termux! :) Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7bneUX_kVA

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12
    TypMo▲154

    Hello HN! I’ve been working on a small tool that helps you move from quick wireframe experiments to solid, production-ready prompts. As a designer, I’ve always felt that getting the structure right early saves a ton of pain later. TypMo leans into that idea by grounding everything in IA-style wireframes- fast to create, easy to iterate, and perfect for figuring out what you actually mean before throwing prompts at AI. I’m now pushing it a step further with a lightweight DSL. Still early, still rough around the edges, but with some AI help it’s starting to feel real. Would love to hear what…

    Dec 2025 · typmo.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    The top-like text-based user interface for Austin. Contribute to P403n1x87/austin-tui development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    A simple programming and debugging environment.

    2022 · hackage.haskell.org · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    Hey all, I am Paul, an indie-dev, I am working on this web based Drag and drop GUI builder tool for python. It's still in beta and currently supports tkinter and customtk. It can generate clean code python for the UI you build. You can check out the source code here: https://github.com/PaulleDemon/PyUIBuilder Feel free to check it out. Thanks!

    2025 · pyuibuilder.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    A minimal text-editor with lua scripting. Contribute to skx/kilua development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    A TUI text reader for the terminal. Contribute to octobanana/fltrdr development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    A GUI Notepad completely made from scratch using C++ native library and Graphics library coupled with mouse events as part my 12th Grade Project in 2015 - vibhoothi/CNotepad

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19
    Multitui▲126

    I made Multitui to control the sandbox of coding agents easily without changing my dev environment (no special container or VM). There's no configuration required in your local dev environment... just launch ClaudeCode.app instead of claude in your general terminal. Containers and VMs can be useful, but I always have a bunch of projects going and those solutions feel heavy. Multitui creates single-purpose native macOS apps for any terminal app, with optional sandbox. It uses the built-in macOS sandbox-exec along with log monitoring to give you an easy UI to manage rules, see what's being…

    Feb 2026 · multitui.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20TA

    Whereas this is mostly a terminal eye-candy project to get you street cred, it does have some serious aspects. Firstly it solves the age-old problem of low-contrast text, like when you `ls` a broken symlink and the red background colour is too near your current theme's foreground colour. Tattoy solves this by using none other than the web's WCAG 2.1 contrast algorithm for accessible text. Secondly, an explicit design goal is that Tattoy should be able to polyfill new terminal protocols, the `xwayland` of the TTY if you will. Say if we want to experiment with completely deprecating ANSI…

    2025 · tattoy.sh · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    TUIs for the terminal, desktop, and web. Contribute to ansiwave/nimwave development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    This was by far the most common missing feature of the library since my first post, so I'm really happy I managed to figure it out. See the release for some code examples and a detailed changelog, and most importantly, have a great day!

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    A Terminal UI to browse Hacker News. Contribute to aome510/hackernews-TUI development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24
    Perixi▲71

    Wiki-like note taking helping with the writing process

    2018 · its alternatives →

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