Installation

bibtui is a single Python package. It runs anywhere Python 3.12+ does — your laptop, a remote server over SSH, or an HPC login node.

Platform support

bibtui is actively developed and tested on Linux and macOS. It is pure Python on top of Textual, which itself supports Windows Terminal, so it should work on Windows in principle — but it has not yet been tested there, and hasn't seen the same real-world mileage as Linux/macOS. If you try it on Windows, please open an issue with whatever you find, good or bad.

Recommended — uv

uv is the fastest way to install and run bibtui. It installs the app into an isolated environment in under a second.

uv tool install bibtui

Update an existing installation:

uv tool upgrade bibtui

Try it without installing

uvx runs bibtui in a throwaway environment — nothing is installed permanently:

uvx bibtui              # opens the file browser
uvx bibtui references.bib

pip

pip install bibtui

Verify

bibtui --version

Then open a library:

bibtui references.bib

…or just run bibtui and pick a file from the built-in browser.

Staying up to date

bibtui checks PyPI once a day and tells you when a newer version is available. You can also trigger a check on demand from the command palette (Ctrl+P → Check for updates).