glab-tui

A terminal user interface (TUI) for GitLab and GitHub, built on top of glab and gh. Browse issues, pull requests / merge requests, pipelines, runners, and releases without leaving your terminal.

• GitHub & GitLab Dual Support — Automatic detection of repository host, dynamically translating TUI actions and metadata updates to gh or glab CLI commands.
• Issues — list, filter, create, and edit issues (title, labels, assignees, milestone, due date, weight, confidentiality, description)
• Merge Requests / Pull Requests — list, filter, create MRs from issues, approve, merge, view diffs in terminal with code reviews, and edit MR/PR metadata
• Code Reviews — draft inline comments, multi-line selections, code suggestions with syntax highlighting, and atomic review submission
• Side-by-Side Diff — toggle between unified and side-by-side diff layouts with syntax highlighting
• Pipelines / Actions — inspect pipelines and their jobs, retry/cancel pipelines/actions and individual jobs, stream build traces
• Runners — list runners with structured details panel; pause/resume, edit descriptions, and monitor live performance/queue metrics
• Releases — browse project releases and view details in the terminal
• Multi-colored Labels — table columns render labels with their individual unique hashed colors, preserving search highlights
• Columns Config Modal — press Tab / , to open a centered popup overlay to toggle column visibility, group by any column, and set sort order
• Value-based Column Filtering — filter table rows by specific column values from the configure popup
• Live Search — fuzzy-filter across all visible columns by pressing /
• Inline editing — full edit menus with searchable multi-select selectors for labels, assignees, reviewers, and milestones
• Interactive Date Picker — calendar widget for Due Date / Start Date fields in edit menus
• External editor — descriptions and freeform fields open in your $EDITOR / $VISUAL (also via Ctrl+E)
• Lazy-load tabs — data for each tab is only fetched the first time you switch to it; refresh with F5 / Ctrl+R
• Themes — six built-in color themes; fully customizable via config.toml or custom .toml files
• Configurable keybindings — every action is remappable in ~/.config/glab-tui/config.toml

Windows note: the binary works on Windows. Editor integration uses cmd /c automatically when $OS is Windows.

git clone https://github.com/rcieri/glab-tui
cd glab-tui
cargo build --release
# The binary is at ./target/release/glab-tui

Copy the binary somewhere on your $PATH, e.g.:

cp target/release/glab-tui ~/.local/bin/

cargo install --path .

curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rcieri/glab-tui/main/install.sh | sh

Or with wget:

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rcieri/glab-tui/main/install.sh | sh

The binary is installed to ~/.local/bin/ (configurable via PREFIX environment variable).

iwr -useb https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rcieri/glab-tui/main/install.ps1 | iex

The binary is installed to $env:USERPROFILE\.local\bin\ (configurable via -Prefix parameter).

docker run --rm -it -v "$PWD:/workspace" ghcr.io/rcieri/glab-tui:latest

The image includes gh and expects a Git repository mounted at /workspace.

brew install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rcieri/glab-tui/main/Formula/glab-tui.rb

Installs the glab-tui binary on macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon) and Linux (x86_64 and ARM64). Requires gh; glab is optional.

scoop install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rcieri/glab-tui/main/scoop/glab-tui.json

The manifest uses Scoop's autoupdate — version bumps are pulled automatically from GitHub releases.

glab-tui delegates all API calls to the glab and gh CLIs — authenticate once and you're done:

glab auth login   # for GitLab repos
gh auth login     # for GitHub repos

The active project is detected automatically from the origin remote in the current working directory.

On first launch, glab-tui writes a default config to:

~/.config/glab-tui/config.toml          # Linux / macOS (XDG)
$GLAB_TUI_CONFIG                         # override: set to the full file path

The generated file is fully annotated. Key sections:

# Pick a built-in theme preset
theme_preset = "default"   # default | tokyo-night | gruvbox | nord | catppuccin-mocha | dracula

# Override individual colors (takes precedence over theme_preset)
# [theme]
# bg = "#121214"
# border_focused = "#31bf67"
# ...19 color tokens total

# Remap any keybinding
[keybindings.global]
next_tab = "l"
# ...

[keybindings.issues]
create_issue = "n"
edit_entity = "e"
# ...

# Persist default column visibility / grouping per pane
# [issues]
# columns = ["ID", "State", "Title", "Labels"]
# group_by_column = "State"

Drop any <name>.toml file into ~/.config/glab-tui/themes/ and set theme_preset = "<name>" in config.toml. The file must define the same 19 color tokens as the bundled themes.

Set $EDITOR or $VISUAL to control which editor opens for description and freeform fields:

export EDITOR=nvim   # or vim, nano, hx, code, etc.

The default fallback is helix (hx). Inside any edit menu you can also press Ctrl+E to open the editor directly.

# Run from inside a GitLab or GitHub repository:
cd /path/to/your/repo
glab-tui

# Specifying optional flags:
glab-tui --repo organization/project-name
glab-tui --dir /path/to/other/repo

The TUI will launch in the terminal, auto-detecting the project context and fetching the Issues tab immediately.

All keys below are the defaults. Every binding is remappable in config.toml under [keybindings.global].

Issue edit menu fields

MR edit menu fields

Inside a pipeline (job view)

If you type a value that doesn't exist in the list, a + Create "…" option appears at the top, letting you create a new label inline.

All API calls are made by shelling out to gh api or glab api — no personal access token or direct HTTP client is required inside the binary.

src/
├── main.rs          # Entry point, event loop, all key-binding handlers
├── app.rs           # App state, Tab enum, DiffView, DatePicker, filtering logic
├── config.rs        # Config/Theme loading, keybinding structs, TOML generation
├── event.rs         # Async event handler (keyboard, tick, async data events)
├── ui.rs            # Ratatui render functions for every tab and overlay
├── themes/          # Bundled theme TOML files (default, tokyo-night, gruvbox, nord, catppuccin-mocha, dracula)
├── gitlab/
│   ├── mod.rs       # Module declarations
│   ├── client.rs    # GitlabClient (wraps `gh api` / `glab api`), endpoint translation
│   ├── issues.rs    # Issue type + list/get/edit API calls
│   ├── mr.rs        # MergeRequest/PR type + list/get/edit API calls
│   ├── pipelines.rs # Pipeline + Job types, list/fetch/retry logic, unit tests
│   ├── runners.rs   # Runner type + list/edit API calls
│   ├── releases.rs  # Release type + list API call
│   ├── milestones.rs# Milestone type + list/issue API calls
│   └── notifications.rs # Todo/notification type + list API calls
└── utils/
    ├── mod.rs       # Module declarations
    ├── cache.rs     # Offline caching for repo context and API payloads
    ├── format.rs    # Time formatting, markdown rendering, string truncation
    ├── ui.rs        # StatefulTable generic helper
    └── update.rs    # GitHub releases self-updater

cargo test

Unit tests live in several modules:

• src/gitlab/pipelines.rs — pipeline job deduplication and stage-ordering logic.
• src/gitlab/client.rs — GitHub-to-GitLab endpoint translation and JSON schema translation.
• src/app.rs — selector fuzzy-matching and filter logic.

1. Fork the repo and create a feature branch.
2. Keep commits atomic and follow Conventional Commits.
3. Run cargo fmt and cargo clippy -- -D warnings before opening a PR.
4. Add or update tests where relevant.

MIT — see LICENSE if present, or treat as unlicensed until one is added.