Rich

Here’s everything you need to know about rich — the Python library for beautiful terminal output.
Author

Benedict Thekkel

🖼️ What is Rich?

rich is a Python library for rich text and beautiful formatting in the terminal — including:

  • 🌈 Colored text & styles
  • 📊 Tables, progress bars, trees
  • 🪵 Log rendering
  • 📦 JSON + syntax highlighting
  • 🖼️ Markdown and emoji rendering

It’s used in projects like Textual, FastAPI, Typer, pipx, and Pydantic.

🚀 Installation

pip install rich

Or with uv:

uv pip install rich

🧱 Basic Usage

from rich import print

print("[bold magenta]Hello[/bold magenta] [green]World![/green] :rocket:")

✅ Output with colors and emoji.

Rich Console

from rich.console import Console

console = Console()
console.print("Hello [cyan]World[/cyan]!", style="bold")

🧾 Text Formatting

Supports:

  • Styles: bold, italic, underline, strike
  • Colors: names, hex (#ff00ff), RGB tuples
  • Emoji shortcodes (like :rocket:)
console.print("This is [bold red]error[/bold red] and [green]success[/green]!")

📐 Layouts

✅ Tables

from rich.table import Table

table = Table(title="User Info")
table.add_column("Name", style="cyan")
table.add_column("Email", style="magenta")
table.add_row("Ben", "ben@example.com")
table.add_row("Kiera", "kiera@example.com")

console.print(table)

🌳 Trees

from rich.tree import Tree

tree = Tree("📁 Root")
tree.add("📄 File1.txt")
branch = tree.add("📂 Folder")
branch.add("📄 NestedFile.txt")

console.print(tree)

🔄 Progress Bars

from rich.progress import track
import time

for step in track(range(10), description="Processing..."):
    time.sleep(0.1)

⏳ Manual Progress Bars

from rich.progress import Progress

with Progress() as progress:
    task = progress.add_task("Downloading...", total=100)
    while not progress.finished:
        progress.update(task, advance=10)
        time.sleep(0.2)

🐞 Logging with Rich

import logging
from rich.logging import RichHandler

logging.basicConfig(
    level="DEBUG",
    handlers=[RichHandler()],
    format="%(message)s",
)

logger = logging.getLogger("rich")
logger.info("Info log")
logger.error("Error log")

🧬 Syntax Highlighting

from rich.syntax import Syntax

code = '''
def greet(name):
    print(f"Hello, {name}")
'''

syntax = Syntax(code, "python", theme="monokai", line_numbers=True)
console.print(syntax)

📚 Pretty Print JSON

from rich.pretty import pprint
from rich.json import JSON

pprint({"foo": "bar", "baz": [1, 2, 3]})

console.print(JSON('{"key": "value", "list": [1, 2, 3]}'))

✨ Markdown Rendering

from rich.markdown import Markdown

md = Markdown("# Title\n\n**Bold** and *italic* text.")
console.print(md)

💥 Error Tracebacks

from rich.traceback import install
install()

# Raise any exception after this and it'll show a beautiful traceback
raise ValueError("Oops!")

🧪 Testing & Integration

Django Logging

Use RichHandler in settings.py:

LOGGING = {
    "version": 1,
    "handlers": {
        "console": {
            "class": "rich.logging.RichHandler",
            "level": "DEBUG",
        },
    },
    "root": {
        "handlers": ["console"],
        "level": "INFO",
    },
}

🧵 Combining Components

from rich.panel import Panel
from rich.align import Align

panel = Panel.fit(
    Align.center("[bold green]Task Complete![/bold green]"),
    border_style="green",
    title="Status",
)

console.print(panel)

⚙️ Advanced: Live Dashboards

from rich.live import Live
from rich.table import Table
import time

table = Table()
table.add_column("Task")
table.add_column("Progress")

with Live(table, refresh_per_second=4):
    for i in range(5):
        table.add_row(f"Task {i}", f"{i*20}%")
        time.sleep(0.5)

📦 Rich CLI

rich [FILE]          # Pretty-print file content
rich --traceback     # See a rich traceback on crash

🧮 Rich Ecosystem

  • textual: TUI apps (terminal GUIs) with Rich
  • rich-click: Combine click and Rich
  • typer: Uses Rich under the hood
  • rich-prompt-toolkit: Fancy prompts and input
  • rich-argparse: Pretty CLI help output

📊 Summary Cheat Sheet

Feature Module
Styled text console.print()
Tables rich.table.Table
Progress Bars rich.progress.Progress
Logging rich.logging.RichHandler
Syntax Highlighting rich.syntax.Syntax
JSON/Pretty Print rich.json, rich.pretty
Markdown rich.markdown.Markdown
Error Tracebacks rich.traceback.install()

Let me know if you’d like:

  • A custom CLI logger setup
  • A Rich-based dashboard
  • A Textual app starter I can scaffold one for you.
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