Crossterm

Crossterm is a cross-platform terminal manipulation library for the Rust programming language. It provides a unified API for performing common terminal operations, including moving the cursor, styling text with colors and attributes, clearing parts of the screen, and querying terminal size. The library targets Windows and Unix-like platforms by translating commands into native Windows Console API calls or ANSI escape sequences on POSIX terminals.

Its API is organized into several modules, such as cursor, style, terminal, and event. The event module exposes input events including key presses, mouse actions, resize events, and focus changes. Crossterm supports both raw mode and alternate screen buffers, enabling lower-level control in interactive applications while preserving the terminal state on exit.

Two core patterns are supported for sending sequences to the terminal: the execute macro, which writes commands immediately to a writer, and the queue macro, which collects commands for batch output. This design allows precise control over the timing and ordering of terminal updates.

Crossterm is open source and widely used in the Rust ecosystem. It is designed for safety and portability with a lightweight footprint and minimal runtime dependencies. The dual MIT and Apache-2.0 license applies, facilitating use in a variety of projects.

Applications in the ecosystem include terminal user interfaces and CLI tools, with several projects offering crossterm as a backend for cross-platform behavior. It is commonly chosen when a project requires consistent terminal control across Windows and Unix-like platforms without vendor-specific dependencies.