Meet mytuis: A Sleek Terminal Application Manager Built with Bash and Gum
Having spent over 25 years in software development and managing countless Linux environments, I've accumulated a vast collection of custom bash scripts, containers, and CLI tools. Remembering their exact paths and managing them efficiently directly from the terminal is a common challenge. To solve this, I built mytuis . mytuis is a small, attractive terminal UI for managing a personal catalogue of applications. It is built with gum and plain bash, with persistent storage in a human-readable YAML file. GITHUB REPO : https://github.com/horaciod/mytuis Why mytuis? I wanted a tool that didn't require heavy dependencies or a complex setup, but still looked great and provided a smooth user experience. Here is what mytuis brings to the terminal: CRUD operations: You can create, read, update, and delete application entries from a single menu. Quick launch: Pick an app from the filterable list and it is launched immediately. It replaces the manager process via exec, meaning no extra shell window is left behind. Smart path handling: It accepts absolute paths (like /usr/bin/firefox), relative paths (./scripts/myscript.sh), tilde paths (~/bin/foo), or plain command names looked up in your $PATH (firefox). Persistent metadata: Every entry stores its name, description, absolute path, creation date, and last-used date. Friendly TUI: You get clear menus, color-coded messages, and clean borders, all powered by gum. Under the Hood: Plain Text and Standard Utils Simplicity and standard compliance were key goals. mytuis requires bash ≥ 4 and standard Unix utilities like awk, sed, grep, date, and tput. Your catalogue is stored at ~/.mytuis.yaml. Because it is a standard YAML file, it can be inspected, edited, or backed up with any text editor. It is also completely safe to sync with a dotfiles repository or version-control. To ensure data integrity, all file operations are performed atomically by rewriting the YAML file from scratch on every change, so there is no risk of leaving the fi