# `dabeob`: a simple TUI lib for Zig

> Source: <https://ziggit.dev/t/dabeob-a-simple-tui-lib-for-zig/18166#post_1>
> Published: 2026-10-31 22:57:50+00:00

`dabeob`:
After investing not too less hours of my free time over the last weeks into writing my own TUI lib, it’s now in a first presentable alpha state; as already reported in the “Whats everybody working on” thread.[\[1\]](https://ziggit.dev#footnote-80826-1)[\[2\]](https://ziggit.dev#footnote-80826-2)

The main inspiration was to replace the LLM/AI-powered TUI lib of my primary hobby project `lui` with handwritten code. Since the latter is only made out of fun, I want it to be mostly my own crafted code.

In contrast to many other TUI libs (not only the Zig ones) `dabeob` offers no enhanced “Widget” system with predefined widget sets like “lists”, “bars”, “tables” etc. The main focus is on wrapping the low level stuff (setting up terminal, fill col/row grid, double buffer grid for efficient writing) and offer a simple but easy to understand interface for printing styled chars to the terminal at specific locations. Because in the end thats what every elaborated widget also does: printing styled chars to stdout.

The repo has a simple example showing a plain list, some boxes and text input field:

So far, it works good enough that I already replaced the TUI dep in [`lui`](https://codeberg.org/lukeflo/lui/src/branch/switch_tui_to_dabeob) with `dabeob`.

Since the state is far from perfect, expect bugs and breaking changes

0.17.0