A developer-focused entry in TopGit's GitHub warehouse: michael-lazar/rtv, 4.6k stars, Developer Tools, Python. Browse Reddit from your terminal
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A text-based interface (TUI) to view and interact with Reddit from your terminal.
Table of Contents
Demo
Installation
Usage
Settings
Themes
FAQ
Contributing
License
Demo
You can use telnet or ssh to try out a lite version of RTV directly in your terminal, without needing to install it:
$ telnet redditbox.us
$ ssh redditbox.us
redditbox.us is an independent project by Alex Jarmoszuk
Installation
PyPI package
RTV is available on PyPI and can be installed with pip:
$ pip install rtv
Native packages
See Repology for an up-to-date list of supported distro packages:
# macOS
$ brew install rtv
# Arch
$ pacman -S rtv
# Nix
$ nix-env -i rtv
# Debian
$ apt install rtv
# FreeBSD
$ pkg install rtv
From source
$ git clone https://github.com/michael-lazar/rtv.git
$ cd rtv
$ python setup.py install
Windows
RTV is not supported on Windows, due to a lack of resources and interest. Sorry!
Usage
To run the program, type:
$ rtv --help
Controls
Move the cursor using either the arrow keys or Vim style movement:
Press ▲ and ▼ to scroll through submissions
Press ▶ to view the selected submission and ◀ to return
Press space-bar to expand/collapse comments
Press u to login (this requires a web browser for OAuth)
Press ? to open the help screen
Press / to open the navigation prompt, where you can type things like:
/front
/r/commandprompt+linuxmasterrace
/r/programming/controversial
/u/me
/u/multi-mod/m/art
/domain/github.com
See CONTROLS for the full list of commands.
Settings
Configuration File
Configuration files are stored in the {HOME}/.config/rtv/ directory.
Check out rtv.cfg for the full list of configurable options. You can clone this file into your home directory by running:
$ rtv --copy-config
Viewing Media Links
You can use mailcap to configure how RTV will open different types of links.
A mailcap file allows you to associate different MIME media types, like image/jpeg or video/mp4, with shell commands. This feature is disabled by default because it takes a few extra steps to configure. To get started, copy the default mailcap template to your home directory.
$ rtv --copy-mailcap
This template contains examples for common MIME types that work with popular reddit websites like imgur, youtube, and gfycat. Open the mailcap template and follow the instructions listed inside.
Once you've setup your mailcap file, enable it by launching rtv with the rtv --enable-media flag (or set it in your rtv.cfg)
Environment Variables
The default programs that RTV interacts with can be configured through environment variables:
$RTV_EDITOR
A program used to compose text submissions and comments, e.g. vim, emacs, gedit If not specified, will fallback to $VISUAL and $EDITOR in that order.
$RTV_BROWSER
A program used to open links to external websites, e.g. firefox, google-chrome, w3m, lynx If not specified, will fallback to $BROWSER, or your system's default browser.
$RTV_URLVIEWER
A tool used to extract hyperlinks from blocks of text, e.g. urlview, urlscan
If not specified, will fallback to urlview if it is installed.
Clipboard
RTV supports copying submission links to the OS clipboard. On macOS this is supported out of the box.
On Linux systems you will need to install either xsel or xclip.
Themes
Themes can be used to customize the look and feel of RTV
Solarized Dark
Solarized Light
Papercolor
Molokai
You can list all installed themes with the --list-themes command, and select one with --theme. You can save your choice permanently in your rtv.cfg file. You can also use the F2 & F3 keys inside of RTV to cycle through all available themes.
For instructions on writing and installing your own themes, see THEMES.md.
FAQ
Why am I getting an error during installation/when launching rtv?
If your distro ships with an older version of python 2.7 or python-requests,
you may experience SSL errors or other package incompatibilities. The
easiest way to fix this is to install rtv using python 3. If you
don't already have pip3, see http://stackoverflow.com/a/6587528 for setup
instructions. Then do
$ sudo pip uninstall rtv
$ sudo pip3 install -U rtv
Why do I see garbled text like M-b~@M-" or ^@?
This type of text usually shows up when python is unable to render
unicode properly.
Try starting RTV in ascii-only mode with rtv --ascii
Make sure that the terminal/font that you're using supports unicode
Try setting the LOCALE to utf-8
Your python may have been built against the wrong curses library,
see here and
here for more information
How do I run the code directly from the repository?
This project is structured to be run as a python module. This means that
you need to launch it using python's -m flag. See the example below, which
assumes that you have cloned the repository into the directory ~/rtv_project.
$ cd ~/rtv_project
$ python3 -m rtv
Contributing
All feedback and suggestions are welcome, just post an issue!
Before writing any code, please read the Contributor Guidelines.
License
This project is distributed under the MIT license.
No homepage URL was recorded for michael-lazar/rtv in TopGit's last sync. The README tab above frequently contains screenshots and demo links, or check the repository description on GitHub.
How active is development on michael-lazar/rtv?
The most recent commit recorded on michael-lazar/rtv was 3.5 years ago, based on the GitHub push timestamp. The repository has 281 forks — one of the better signals of community interest.
How many stars does michael-lazar/rtv have?
michael-lazar/rtv has 4.6k GitHub stars — refresh the page for the live number, or check github.com/michael-lazar/rtv. TopGit mirrors GitHub's count but does not claim minute-by-minute accuracy.
Is michael-lazar/rtv open source?
Yes — michael-lazar/rtv ships under the MIT license, which makes its source code freely readable (and, depending on license terms, forkable and reusable). Source: github.com/michael-lazar/rtv.
What else is in the Developer Tools space?
michael-lazar/rtv is tracked by TopGit under the Developer Tools category, alongside 7 GitHub-tagged topics. Trending and Topics pages list peer repositories of comparable stars and language.
What topics is michael-lazar/rtv associated with?
GitHub's repository topics for michael-lazar/rtv: "command-line", "curses", "python", "reddit", "reddit-client", "terminal", "tui". TopGit's editorial category is Developer Tools.
Where do I read more about michael-lazar/rtv?
This TopGit page is a snapshot — the READ ME tab shows the project's own README content (links stripped, images preserved). The GitHub repository at github.com/michael-lazar/rtv is the definitive source.
Read full README in the tab above.
Is rtv worth your time?
ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity can all read this page. Ask one of them what it makes of rtv.
/rtv
