T-UI
T-UI Linux CLI Launcher is a text based launcher for android. The launcher is free, portable and extensible. It is distributed under the GPL with some reservations by its creator Francesco Andreuzzi. You can get T-UI on F-Droid.
Shell phone
T-UI is the ideal mobile environment for the shell dwelling Linux enthusiast. It comes with all the creature comforts of a command line like aliases and shell programs. It serves as a terminal emulator for the android shell.
The launcher is written in Android’s preferred language Java and, it is configured by editing a set of config files. The runtime configuration files are written in simple xml. These xml files are what make T-UI portable and extensible. Since they are plain text you can version control them with git. Therefore, you can share your theme and setup with anyone.
Nord Theme
My personalized launcher configuration uses colors from the popular Nord color scheme. The Nord palette uses cool blues and pastel highlights. You can find my config files on my github.
T-UI Features
My favorite features in T-UI are the built in programs. The launcher has a built in weather app, text editor, notes app, music player, and RSS reader. Depending on your use case the T-UI can replace up to five commonly used applications.
T-UI has auto completion in the form of suggestions. Suggestions greatly improve the textual user expirience. Suggestions intuitively list things like commonly used applications and app groups, files and directories, or command flags.
Overall its impressive how much this launcher does. The features, and customization makes T-UI ideal for many devices. It has low overhead for older devices. It makes my old phone more usable and more personal.
whatis T-UI 2
If T-UI excites you, you’ll be happy to know that the creator of T-UI is planning a second version. T-UI2 was announced in February of this year. Unfortunately it is on hiatus while Francesco attends university.
From the horse’s mouth
I reached out to Francesco for more information on T-UI, and here is what they had to say…
- What inspired the original T-UI launcher?
“I have always appreciated the power of text interfaces as opposed to GUIs. GUIs forces you to perform many steps for basics operations, and are in general featureless. Moreover they’re hardly extensible: new features require new pieces of the visual interface, which takes time to design and build. Textual interfaces in contrast allow the developer to integrate new features almost seamlessly.”
- Where does your affinity for the command line come from? What is your history with GNU/Linux?
“I used many Linux distros for several years (Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Elementary OS, Debian), this is were I learned to appreciate textual interfaces. Now I’m using MacOS, but I do as much things as I can on the terminal.”
- What new features can we look forward to in T-UI 2? How can people help? What devices does the new project target?
“Unfortunately the development is paused because I’m pretty busy with University.”
- Is T-UI 2 a fork of the original or are you starting from scratch?
“The first idea was to start from scratch, but I shortly acknowledged that it would have taken me far too much time.”
Conclusion
T-UI is my favorite android launcher, but its not for everyone. There are some pitfalls to the launcher. The interface is not intuitive if someone else wants to use your phone. Most people expect a palette of icons. Not to mention, In an emergency situation you might be better off with a symbolic interface.
T-UI launcher is not a complete replacement for Linux. If you need a full replacement for Linux on mobile check out Termux or userLAnd.