Zenity AlternativesShells and other similar apps like Zenity

Zenity is described as 'Tool that allows you to display GTK dialog boxes in commandline and shell scripts' and is a Shell in the os & utilities category. There are more than 10 alternatives to Zenity for a variety of platforms, including Linux, Windows, Mac, BSD and Python apps. The best Zenity alternative is Yad, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like Zenity are Modern Message Box Generator, wxFormBuilder, KDialog and wxDev-C++.

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Zenity alternatives page was last updated Oct 15, 2025

Yad
10 likes
Yad (yet another dialog) is a fork of Zenity with many improvements, such as custom buttons, additional dialogs, pop-up menu in notification icon and more. It's useful for creating quick and easy GUIs for shell and batch scripting.
Cost / License
Free
Open Source
Application type
Shell
Origin
International
Platforms
Linux
Is Yad a good alternative to Zenity?
Modern Message Box Generator
1 like
Generates a customizable "Task Dialog" box - a more modern version of the old Windows message box.'
Cost / License
Free
Open Source (GPL-3.0)
Origin
United States
Platforms
Windows
Is this a good alternative to Zenity?
wxFormBuilder
9 likes
wxWidgets is an excellent framework that enables the creation of multi-platform applications with and without a graphical user interface. There are several applications that help create dialogs visually, even so, some practical problems have led me to start the development of a...
Cost / License
Free
Open Source
Platforms
Mac
Windows
Linux
Is wxFormBuilder a good alternative to Zenity?
KDialog
4 likes
kdialog allows you to display dialog boxes from shell scripts. The syntax is very much inspired from the "dialog" command (which shows text mode dialogs).
Cost / License
Free
Open Source
Application type
Shell
Origin
Germany
EU
Platforms
Linux
Is KDialog a good alternative to Zenity?
wxDev-C++
4 likes
wxDev-C++ is an extension of Bloodshed Dev-C++ by Colin Laplace et. al. This program helps you to create dialogs and frames for wxWidgets visually using a form designer.
Cost / License
Free
Open Source
Alerts
Discontinued
Platforms
Windows
Bloodshed Dev-C++
Is wxDev-C++ a good alternative to Zenity?
easybashgui
1 like
Bash functions library for *BSD and GNU/Linux that aims to give simple GUI functions using yad, gtkdialog, kdialog, zenity, Xdialog, (c)dialog, whiptail or bash builtins depending on KDE or GNOME running or not, Yad/Gtkdialog/Xdialog installed or not and, eventually, X...
Cost / License
Free
Open Source (BSD-3-Clause)
Platforms
Linux
Is easybashgui a good alternative to Zenity?
X
X
xmessage
1 like
display a message or query in a window (X-based /bin/echo).
Cost / License
Free
Open Source
Application type
Shell
Platforms
Linux
X
Is xmessage a good alternative to Zenity?

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3comments
xmessage vs Zenity Comments

Guest
Positive commentMar 13, 2017
1
In case you only have to display a message, and do not want to need a large part of the gnome environment.
Review by a new / low-activity user.
Guest
Positive commentAug 1, 2019
0
it work form shell command line
Review by a new / low-activity user.
Ome Cor
Positive commentJul 11, 2021
0
Xmessage displays a (GUI) window containing a message from the command line, a file, or standard input (from its man page). It is pretty basic and won't win any beauty contests, but it gets the job done and has quite a few handy options.
Review by a new / low-activity user.
X
xmessage is Free and Open SourceZenity is also Free and Open Source
W
W
whiptail
2 likes
display dialog boxes from shell scripts.
22 whiptail alternatives
Cost / License
Free
Open Source
Application type
Shell
Platforms
Linux
W
Is whiptail a good alternative to Zenity?
wxGlade
3 likes
wxGlade is a GUI designer written in Python with the popular GUI toolkit wxPython, that helps you create wxWidgets/wxPython user interfaces. At the moment it can generate Python, C++, Perl, Lisp and XRC (wxWidgets' XML resources) code.
19 wxGlade alternatives
Cost / License
Free
Open Source (MIT)
Platforms
Mac
Windows
Linux
Is wxGlade a good alternative to Zenity?
wxSmith
2 likes
wxSmith is a Code::Blocks plugin for RAD editing of wxWidgets applications.
Cost / License
Free
Open Source
Platforms
Mac
Windows
Linux
Code::Blocks
Is wxSmith a good alternative to Zenity?
D
D
dialog
1 like
display dialog boxes from shell scripts. Curses based. Works in console mode.
22 dialog alternatives
Cost / License
Free
Open Source
Application type
Shell
Platforms
Windows
Linux
D
Is dialog a good alternative to Zenity?
MessagePop
1 like
MessagePop is a simple application designed to help you convey a message to the computer user. The program allows you to specify the message text and the other parameters from the command line.
Cost / License
Free
Proprietary
Platforms
Windows
Is MessagePop a good alternative to Zenity?