dialog ☆
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Description:
Display user-friendly message boxes from shell scripts
Type: Formula  |  Latest Version: 1.3-20251001@0  |  Tracked Since: Dec 17, 2025
Links: Homepage  |  formulae.brew.sh
Category: Developer tools
Tags: shell ncurses tui scripting cli
Install: brew install dialog
About:
Dialog is a utility that allows you to display user-friendly message boxes, menus, and input forms directly from shell scripts. It acts as a wrapper around the ncurses library, providing a clean and simple API for creating text-based user interfaces. This makes it an essential tool for improving the interactivity of installation scripts and system administration tasks.
Key Features:
  • Simple API for creating dialog boxes (yes/no, input, menus)
  • Lightweight and scriptable, designed for shell integration
  • Supports various dialog types including file selection and progress bars
  • Uses the ncurses library for a consistent terminal UI experience
Use Cases:
  • Creating interactive prompts in shell-based installation scripts
  • Building simple text-based menu systems for system administration
  • Gathering user input for configuration scripts without a full GUI
Alternatives:
  • whiptail – Part of newt library; similar functionality but different widget set and library dependency
  • zenity – Creates graphical (GTK) dialog boxes, requires a graphical environment
Version History
Detected Version Rev Change Commit
Jan 17, 2025 2:16am 0 VERSION_BUMP 8143456c
Jun 21, 2024 7:30am 0 VERSION_BUMP 81ca07b1
Jun 20, 2024 9:28pm 0 VERSION_BUMP c6be446a
Jan 1, 2024 7:58am 0 VERSION_BUMP 626a6f82
Oct 3, 2023 1:28pm 0 VERSION_BUMP 284e9c9e
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