inputbox

A cross-platform, native GUI input box for Rust. Yes, finally.

The Story

Picture this: you're writing a Rust CLI tool and you just want to pop up a little dialog that says "hey, what's your name?" and take whatever the user types. Simple, right?

So you look at the ecosystem.

• rfd: Rusty File Dialogs! Cross-platform! Async! Beautiful! ...opens files. Not text. Files.
• native-dialog: Again, no input box, just message boxes and file pickers.
• tinyfiledialogs: input_box looks promising! ...but why does my input box turn into a password input when default is empty (Some(""))? No multiline, no custom labels, no control over backends... Oh and it's a C binding.
• dialog: Finally, an input box! ...but not for Windows or macOS. It fully depends on tools like zenity, kdialog or dialog.

You stare into the void. The void stares back. You write the dialog in HTML/JS because at least Electron works on all platforms.

Not anymore.

What inputbox Does

inputbox is a minimal, cross-platform Rust library that shows a native GUI input dialog and returns what the user typed. It uses whatever is available on the system. Should work™ most of the time.

Quick Start

[dependencies]
inputbox = "0.1"

use inputbox::InputBox;

fn main() {
    let result = InputBox::new()
        .title("Greetings")
        .prompt("What's your name?")
        .run();

    match result {
        Some(name) => println!("Hello, {name}!"),
        None => println!("Fine, be that way."),
    }
}

Features

• Multiple input modes — text, password, or multiline
• Highly customizable — title, prompt, button labels, and more
• Works on most platforms — Windows, macOS, and Linux (with yad or zenity)
• Pluggable backends — use a specific backend or let the library pick

Backends

Backend	Platform	How it works
PSScript	Windows	PowerShell + WinForms, no extra install needed
JXAScript	macOS	osascript JXA, built into the OS
Yad	Linux	yad — preferred if available
Zenity	Linux	zenity — fallback on GNOME systems

The run() method automatically picks the best backend for the current platform. You can also specify one explicitly via run_with().

License

MIT