whiptail AlternativesShells and other similar apps like whiptail

whiptail is described as 'Display dialog boxes from shell scripts' and is a Shell in the os & utilities category. There are more than 10 alternatives to whiptail for Linux, Windows, Mac and BSD. The best whiptail alternative is Zenity, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like whiptail are Modern Message Box Generator, Glade, Yad and wxFormBuilder.

More about whiptail

whiptail alternatives page was last updated Oct 15, 2025

Zenity
10 likes
Zenity is a tool that allows you to display GTK dialog boxes in commandline and shell scripts.
22 Zenity alternatives
Cost / License
Free
Open Source
Application type
Shell
Origin
United States
Platforms
Linux
Is Zenity a good alternative to whiptail?

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1comment
Comments about Zenity as an Alternative to whiptail

Guest
Negative commentAug 8, 2025
0
Whiptail is a tui tool, and Zenity is for creating GUIs
Review by a new / low-activity user.
Zenity is Free and Open Sourcewhiptail is also Free and Open Source
Modern Message Box Generator
1 like
Generates a customizable "Task Dialog" box - a more modern version of the old Windows message box.'
Cost / License
Free
Open Source (GPL-3.0)
Origin
United States
Platforms
Windows
Is this a good alternative to whiptail?
Glade
11 likes
Glade is a RAD (Rapid Application Development) tool to enable quick & easy development of user interfaces for the GTK+ toolkit.
17 Glade alternatives
Cost / License
Free
Open Source
Origin
United States
Alerts
Discontinued
Platforms
Mac
Windows
Linux
+1
Is Glade a good alternative to whiptail?
Yad
10 likes
Yad (yet another dialog) is a fork of Zenity with many improvements, such as custom buttons, additional dialogs, pop-up menu in notification icon and more. It's useful for creating quick and easy GUIs for shell and batch scripting.
22 Yad alternatives
Cost / License
Free
Open Source
Application type
Shell
Origin
International
Platforms
Linux
Is Yad a good alternative to whiptail?
wxFormBuilder
9 likes
wxWidgets is an excellent framework that enables the creation of multi-platform applications with and without a graphical user interface. There are several applications that help create dialogs visually, even so, some practical problems have led me to start the development of a...
Cost / License
Free
Open Source
Platforms
Mac
Windows
Linux
Is wxFormBuilder a good alternative to whiptail?
wxDev-C++
4 likes
wxDev-C++ is an extension of Bloodshed Dev-C++ by Colin Laplace et. al. This program helps you to create dialogs and frames for wxWidgets visually using a form designer.
Cost / License
Free
Open Source
Alerts
Discontinued
Platforms
Windows
Bloodshed Dev-C++
Is wxDev-C++ a good alternative to whiptail?
KDialog
4 likes
kdialog allows you to display dialog boxes from shell scripts. The syntax is very much inspired from the "dialog" command (which shows text mode dialogs).
Cost / License
Free
Open Source
Application type
Shell
Origin
Germany
EU
Platforms
Linux
Is KDialog a good alternative to whiptail?
easybashgui
1 like
Bash functions library for *BSD and GNU/Linux that aims to give simple GUI functions using yad, gtkdialog, kdialog, zenity, Xdialog, (c)dialog, whiptail or bash builtins depending on KDE or GNOME running or not, Yad/Gtkdialog/Xdialog installed or not and, eventually, X...
Cost / License
Free
Open Source (BSD-3-Clause)
Platforms
Linux
Is easybashgui a good alternative to whiptail?
wxGlade
3 likes
wxGlade is a GUI designer written in Python with the popular GUI toolkit wxPython, that helps you create wxWidgets/wxPython user interfaces. At the moment it can generate Python, C++, Perl, Lisp and XRC (wxWidgets' XML resources) code.
Cost / License
Free
Open Source (MIT)
Platforms
Mac
Windows
Linux
Is wxGlade a good alternative to whiptail?
wxSmith
2 likes
wxSmith is a Code::Blocks plugin for RAD editing of wxWidgets applications.
Cost / License
Free
Open Source
Platforms
Mac
Windows
Linux
Code::Blocks
Is wxSmith a good alternative to whiptail?
dialog
1 like
display dialog boxes from shell scripts. Curses based. Works in console mode.
22 dialog alternatives
Cost / License
Free
Open Source
Application type
Shell
Platforms
Windows
Linux
Is dialog a good alternative to whiptail?
VisualWX
1 like
Visualwx aims to be the ultimate RAD tool, designed for c++, python, perl, ruby, lua and wxWidgets. Still there are many things to do, but we've achieved considerable progress.
Cost / License
Free
Open Source
Alerts
Discontinued
Platforms
Windows
Linux
Is VisualWX a good alternative to whiptail?