Zenity

Zenity is a GTK+ powered alternative for the dialog(1) and the whiptail(1).

It can display

  • text or password entry
  • calendar (date selector)
  • file/directory selector
  • color chooser
  • confirmation
  • “info”
  • “warning”
  • …

User input Zenity dumps to STDOUT so you can easily integrate any dialog into your shell scripts.

Also, Zenity can show the desktop notifications and the progress indicators.

Examples

  • OS Suspend confirmation:

    if zenity --question --text="Suspend?" --default-cancel; then
    systemctl suspend
fi

  • A shopping list (from man zenity):

    zenity --list --checklist --column "Buy" --column "Item" \
    TRUE Apples \
    TRUE Oranges \
    FALSE Pears \
    FALSE Toothpaste

  • A notification (from man zenity):

    zenity --notification --window-icon=update.png --text "System update necessary!"

Wrappers

There are many wrappers for the different programming languages. Here is a couple of them: