Console application

A console application or command-line program is a computer program (applications or utilities) designed to be used via a text-only user interface, such as a text terminal, the command-line interface of some operating systems (Unix, DOS,[1] etc.)

or the text-based interface included with most graphical user interface (GUI) operating systems, such as the Windows Console in Microsoft Windows,[2] the Terminal in macOS, and xterm in Unix.

The ability to create console applications is kept as a feature of modern programming environments such as Visual Studio and the .NET Framework on Microsoft Windows.

[3] It simplifies the learning process of a new programming language by removing the complexity of a graphical user interface (see an example in the C# article).

Console-based applications include Alpine (an e-mail client), cmus (an audio player), Irssi (an IRC client), Lynx (a web browser), Midnight Commander (a file manager), Music on Console (an audio player), Mutt (an e-mail client), nano (a text editor), ne (a text editor), newsbeuter (an RSS reader), and ranger (a file manager).