Zenity

Like tools such as whiptail and dialog, Zenity allows easy creation of GUIs, though it has fewer features than more complex GUI-creation tools.

Other scripting languages such as Perl and Python can be used to construct full-scale GUI applications, but the zenity program enables a shell script to interact with a GUI user.... [The] user interface is not as refined as one that could be provided by a full-featured GUI application, but it is perfectly suitable for simple interactions.

,  Chris Tyler

As of 2012, Zenity is available for Linux, BSD and Windows. A Zenity port to Mac OS X is available in MacPorts and Homebrew.

As of 2018, Zenity ports for Windows are available: zenity-windows (based on version 3.20.0) and winzenity (based on 3.8.0 / statically linked)

Zenity does not possess any built-in scripting capabilities and it must, therefore, rely on an interpreter for processing. One option is Python in combination with the PyZenity library.

Python example

from PyZenity import InfoMessage from PyZenity import Question from PyZenity import ErrorMessage choice = Question("Please press a button.") if choice: InfoMessage("You pressed Yes!") else: ErrorMessage("You pressed No!")

POSIX shell script example

#!/bin/sh if zenity --question --text="Please press a button."; then zenity --info --text="You pressed Yes\!" else zenity --error --text="You pressed No\!" fi

Windows shell script example

@echo off zenity --question --ok-label="Yes" --cancel-label="No" --text="Please press a button." if %ERRORLEVEL% == 1 goto error zenity --info --text="You pressed Yes!" goto end :error zenity --error --text="You pressed No!" :end