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 = "0.0.1"

use inputbox::InputBox;

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

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

Examples

Password Input

use inputbox::{InputBox, InputMode};

let result = InputBox::new()
    .title("Login")
    .prompt("Enter your password:")
    .mode(InputMode::Password)
    .show()
    .unwrap();

Custom Buttons and Dimensions

use inputbox::InputBox;

let result = InputBox::new()
    .title("Confirm")
    .prompt("Are you sure?")
    .ok_label("Yes, do it")
    .cancel_label("No, abort")
    .width(400)
    .height(200)
    .show()
    .unwrap();

Asynchronous Usage

use inputbox::InputBox;

InputBox::new()
    .title("Async Input")
    .prompt("Enter something:")
    .show_async(|result| {
        println!("Result: {:?}", result);
    });

Note: On iOS, you must use async methods. See the documentation for details.

Features

• Multiple input modes — text, password, or multiline
• Highly customizable — title, prompt, button labels, dimensions, and more
• Works on most platforms — Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS nad OpenHarmony
• Pluggable backends — use a specific backend or let the library pick
• Synchronous and asynchronous — safe sync on most platforms, async required on iOS

Backends

Backend	Platform	How it works
PSScript	Windows	PowerShell + WinForms, no extra install needed
JXAScript	macOS	osascript JXA, built into the OS
Android	Android	AAR + JNI to show an Android AlertDialog
IOS	iOS	UIKit alert
OHOS	OpenHarmony	NAPI + ArkTS dialog
Yad	Linux	yad
Zenity	Linux	zenity — fallback on GNOME systems

Linux Installation

# Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S yad

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install yad

# Fedora
sudo dnf install yad

# or use zenity (usually pre-installed on GNOME)
sudo apt install zenity

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

License

MIT