tcell screen reproduced as ANSI escape sequences with tcellansi

Posted on: December 22, 2025

Overview

tcellansi is a Go library that converts screen styles drawn with tcell into ANSI escape sequences to make them easier to handle.

Key features

Supports tcell v3 (v2 can be used with the appropriate build tag)
Converts tcell styles into ANSI escape sequences
Can convert a specified screen region to strings that include ANSI escape sequences

Installation

Example when using Go Modules:

go get github.com/noborus/tcellansi@latest

Or add the required package to your go.mod.

Quick usage

Below is a minimal example. Replace function names and usage with the actual ones from the repository as needed.

Example: converting a tcell style

package main

import (
	"github.com/gdamore/tcell/v3"
	"github.com/noborus/tcellansi"
)

func main() {
	style := tcell.StyleDefault.Foreground(tcell.ColorRed).Background(tcell.ColorBlue)
	ansiSeq := tcellansi.ToAnsi(style)
	println(ansiSeq + "Hello world!")
}

This prints “Hello world!” in red text on a blue background.

Example: extracting a screen region

package main

import (
	"github.com/gdamore/tcell/v3"
	"github.com/noborus/tcellansi"
)

func main() {
	screen, err := tcell.NewScreen()
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	screen.Init()
	var scrStr []string
	screen.PutStrStyled(0, 0, "Hello World!", tcell.StyleDefault.Foreground(tcell.ColorRed).Background(tcell.ColorBlue))
	screen.Show()
	scrStr = tcellansi.ScreenContentToStrings(screen, 0, 80, 0, 1)

	event := screen.EventQ()
mainloop:
	for {
		switch (<-event).(type) {
		case *tcell.EventKey:
			break mainloop
		}
	}
	screen.Fini()

	println("----- Screen Content as ANSI -----")
	for _, line := range scrStr {
		print(line)
	}
}

After the tcell screen is shown, pressing any key will exit and then print the tcell screen contents with ANSI escape sequences.