smenu

Name: smenu
Author: Pierre Gentile

A terminal selection filter that presents input as interactive, keyboard-driven menus.

By Pierre Gentile

Free Open sourcemacOS Linux Command line

Official websitegithub.com

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Alternatives

pecopeco narrows piped input interactively as you type and returns a selection; smenu presents input as keyboard-driven menus.
GumDrop-in prompts, menus, spinners and formatting for shell scripts, so a bash script can have a decent interface.
SelectaSelecta is a command-line fuzzy selector for choosing from text lists; smenu presents input as interactive, keyboard-driven menus.
fzffzf filters lists with fuzzy matching and returns selections for shell workflows; smenu presents input as keyboard-driven menus.
wmenuA dynamic menu for Wayland modeled on dmenu, for picking items from a list piped in.
dmenuA minimal dynamic menu for X that picks from large lists of items using the keyboard.

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About smenu

smenu reads words from standard input or a file and displays them in a scrolling terminal window for selection. Users can move the cursor with the keyboard or mouse and choose one or more entries.

It is designed to work with terminals covered by the terminfo database and supports UTF-8, including double-width characters and extended grapheme clusters.

Strengths

Reads selections from standard input or a file
Supports keyboard and mouse navigation
Can be used interactively or in shell scripts

Limitations

Requires a terminal with terminfo support

Details

Pricing: FreeFree and open source under the Mozilla Public License 2.0.
License: MPL-2.0
Developer: Pierre Gentile
Platforms: macOS, Linux, Command line
How it runs: Downloadable app
Best suited for: Shell users adding interactive choices to terminal workflows
Categories: Automation, CLI tools
Last verified: October 8, 2026
Added: October 8, 2026
Provenance: Selected from the Homebrew formula
Sources: github.com/p-gen/smenu

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