I’m still on 8GB of RAM in 2025, and at first, it was a nightmare for all my coding projects. So, initially, I turned my terminal into a full-blown IDE just to survive since TUI apps are just lighter. But once I got used to it, I realized I actually liked the aesthetic of having all my apps in a terminal, where the focus is mainly on text.

From there, I slowly started replacing more and more apps with terminal-based alternatives, not just because they are lighter, but because the workflow started feeling better to me, and I really dig the vibe of getting everything done in the terminal.

Neovim

Vim, but better

A text editor is always one of the most-used apps in any terminal workflow. It’s not just for coding. If you’re tweaking config files, writing quick notes, experimenting with scripts, or trying to fix something you broke five minutes ago, you’re going to open a text editor.

Most distros ship with Vim as the default, but Vim can be… a lot. It’s powerful, no doubt, but there’s a steep learning curve, and not everyone wants to spend a weekend memorizing keybinds just to edit a config file.

Vanilla Vim is fantastic if you’re a developer, but Neovim fits everyone’s use case better. It’s great for writing, it’s great for editing configs, and it still works perfectly well for coding. All the classic Vim keybinds are there if you want them, but you can also use the mouse, so it fits everyone perfectly.

The community support for plugins is also massive, and you’ll find pretty much what you need in the plugin directory (I really recommend nvim-tree with a theme of your choice.) It’s the closest thing to a "good for everyone" TUI text editor I’ve used. If Neovim is not your cup of tea though, you can also try out something like emacs.

Gemini-CLI

It’s not only for vibe-coding

Having an LLM inside your terminal is also much better than using bloated websites or Electron apps. While you can run models locally inside your terminal if you want, you need a really beefy machine for that.

There is a middle ground, though, as you can use apps like Gemini-CLI. As the name suggests, it’s basically Gemini inside your command line. You just need to log in with your Google account, and then you can choose which model you want to use and get started.

But one really cool trick is that it can act as a small agent for you. Since it’s geared toward development, it can create or edit files, run scripts, or execute commands on your behalf. For example, if you tell it to install VLC, it just goes ahead and runs the appropriate package manager command for your distro.

Always verify the commands that Gemini-CLI is asking to execute beforehand. It can cause more harm than good in some rare cases.

Beyond that, you can still use it for the regular LLM stuff. If Gemini isn’t your thing, you can also try out ChatGPT Codex or Claude Code.

Related

Yazi

Quite literally, your traditional file manager

I’ve written about Yazi before, but if you haven’t come across it yet, it’s basically a super-fast TUI file manager for the terminal. It handles all the usual tasks like copying or moving files, but it also packs in a bunch of genuinely useful extras.

If you prefer using the keyboard over a mouse, you’ll love it. Yazi has a shortcut for everything, and once you get into the rhythm, you can fly through your file system way faster than with a traditional GUI. For search, it hooks into tools like fzf and fd, which are pretty much the fastest methods you can find.

It even supports file previews, including images, which is something you don’t see in many TUI apps. Once you get used to Yazi’s speed and workflow, File Explorer doesn’t even come close.

Kew

A 1000 songs... in your terminal

I’ve also been moving away from music-streaming services, so I needed another app for local music playback. Kew is basically a TUI-based music app which does exactly that. When you open it up, you’ll be prompted to enter the path to your music directory.

After that, it’s pretty simple. Just like most of the other apps in this list, you control it via your keyboard, or you can even use your mouse if you want to. Also, it isn’t just a slew of text you would see on most other apps.

It supports proper album art and does everything you would expect from a good music player, like creating playlists, queuing tracks, and even showing a visualizer if you want that bit of visual flair while you’re listening.

That said, if you use Spotify, you don’t need to shift away from streaming entirely. You can also use spotify-player, which is a terminal client for Spotify, and I would argue it’s even better than Kew in terms of the interface.

Browsh

It’s a browser in your terminal! (kinda)

Browsh is more of a fun experiment than an everyday tool for me, but it’s still one of the coolest things you can run in a terminal. It’s essentially a web browser that lives entirely inside your TTY. There is some real utility here if you want a distraction-free way to browse.

As you can see in the image above, Browsh renders all text normally, but images and other media get converted into ASCII art in real-time. It looks a bit strange at first, I’ll admit, but it grows on you. There is a certain modern pixel-art game vibe to it, which actually rocks if you’re into that.

I can also see it working well as a minimal, text-first browser. It doesn’t go overboard with minimalism in a way that becomes annoying, but since multimedia never renders at full resolution and the focus is on the text, it might actually help you focus better. It’s definitely not a full-on browser replacement.

Related

I am tired of bloated GUIs

The only thing I haven’t been able to replace is my browser. I know I mentioned Browsh, but it’s obviously not a full-on replacement, and my browser is still the most-used app on my device (and probably yours too).

I don’t think we will ever get a true TUI alternative that could entirely replace a browser; the internet is far too visual and vast for a pure CLI interface. But even then, it’s pretty great that I’ve been able to replace almost everything else with terminal apps, and I don’t really miss the GUI versions anymore.