TextTop v0.5

A desktop environment simulator inside your terminal, built with Textual.
Simulates a full GUI experience — windows, taskbar, start menu, and apps inside a terminal. Also supports pty and multiplex via the patty terminal (Linux only).

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Table of Contents

• Overview
• Features
• Screenshots
• Installation
• Usage
• Applications
• Architecture
• Roadmap
• License

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Overview

TextTop is a text-based desktop environment (?) built for the terminal. It provides a simulated OS experience — a window manager, start menu, apps, and dynamic layouts.

Highlights

• Windowed GUI in the terminal
• Windows OS / Linux WM Layout Styles
• Mouse & keyboard navigation
• Virtual File System (VFS) for sandbox access
• Extensible modular architecture

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Features

Basic Window Manager

• Floating Mode - move windows freely on the terminal.
• Tiling Mode - automatically snap windows to layouts (supports: vstack, hstack, bsp, bsp_alt, ultra_wide, ultra_tall)
• Windows - adds border, title bar, and controls to programs
• Window controls - move, resize, minimize, maximize, close
• Focus handling - Cycle focus, swap windows (tiled)
• Flyouts - popup menus, context menus

Basic Desktop Components

• Taskbar - widgets (clock, app launchers, start menu, window manager layout display)
• Start Menu - lists supported programs in the /bin directory
• Notifications

Themes

• textual-dark
• textual-light
• nord
• gruvbox
• catpuccin-mocha
• dracula
• tokyo-night
• monokai
• flexoki
• catpuccin-latte
• solarized-light

Compatibility

• Most programs built with textual
• Most programs that run on the terminal (Linux)

Included Applications

• Clock - digital clock widget
• Notepad - minimalist text editor
• Snake - classic terminal snake game
• Patty - xterm-based terminal emulator (Linux only)
• Dustty - command dispatcher

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Screenshots

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Installation

Prerequisites

• Python 3.11+
• Textual v6.5.0
• Unix-like terminal (Linux, macOS, or WSL)
• or Windows cli (cmd/powershell; not fully supported yet)

Clone & Install

Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/l4xp/textop.git
cd textop

Use a virtual environment (optional, but recommended)

pip -m venv .venv
.venv/Scripts/activate # use the script compatible with your terminal

Install dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

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Usage

To run the program:

python boot.py

or

textual run boot.py

Keyboard Shortcuts (to be updated)

• ctrl+p → keys to list all keys in the current context

Key	Action
Alt + Tab	Switch active window
Ctrl + ↑/↓/←/→	Move window directionally
Ctrl + p	Toggle Command Palette

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Roadmap

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Category	Feature	Status
General System & Display	Windows z-levels (layers)	[~]
	Popup/expandable mini windows (flyouts system)	[x]
	Desktop icons for applications (glyphs system)	[~]
	Installer/setup mode for initial configuration	[ ]
	Animations? (heavy)	[ ]
	Simulated filesystem and OS folder structure (bin, home, etc.) (vfs)	[~]
Window Management	Workspaces / multiple desktops	[ ]
	Window Basics (open, minimize, maximize, close, move, resize)	[x]
	App switcher (Alt+Tab / activewindowlist)	[x]
	Window states (runtime)	[x]
	Window states (memory)	[ ]
	Dynamic Layouts (float, vstack, hstack, uwide, utall, bsp, bsp_alt)	[x]
Desktop	Notification/toast system	[x]
	State persistence (snapshots)	[ ]
	User system (login/logout/switch/create/delete)	[ ]
	Security (privileges, passwords, encrypt, decrypt system, hide/show)	[ ]
	Global 'cursor', kb/mouse controlled	[ ]
Status Bar	Launchers (terminal, notepad, debug)	[x]
	Dynamic launcher pinning	[ ]
	Taskbar widgets (battery, volume, etc.)	[x]
	Active Window feedback + switcher	[x]
	Start menu populated from an application directory	[x]
	Start Menu	[~]
	Search functionality	[ ]
Apps	Notepad, terminal/s, snake game	[x]
	Calculator, browser, media viewer/player, file manager, settings	[ ]
QOL	Screenshot (copy a selection to clipboard)	[ ]
	Module-specific configs (taskbar, windows, wm)	[ ]
	CSS override configs (taskbar, windows, wm, desktop)	[ ]
Compatibility	Command Pallette (in place of hotkeys)	[ ]
	Use Ctrl+[A-Z, @], Enter, Esc, Tab, Backspace, Arrow keys, Function keys, Printable ASCII characters, UTF-8 text input only	[ ]

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License

This project is licensed under the MIT License — see the LICENSE file for details.

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Acknowledgments

• Built with Textual
• Inspired by windows, komorebi, linux, sway, vtm, dvtm, desqview

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