Rich Cheat Sheet

Overview

Rich is a Python library for rendering rich text and beautiful formatting in the terminal. It provides tools for styled text, tables, progress bars, syntax highlighting, tracebacks, markdown rendering, tree displays, and much more. Rich works with any terminal that supports ANSI escape codes.

Created by Will McGuigan, Rich has become the de facto standard for building polished CLI applications in Python. It powers the output of tools like Textual, Typer, and many popular Python CLI applications.

Installation

pip install rich

# Verify
python -m rich

Core Usage

Console and Text Styling

from rich.console import Console
from rich.text import Text

console = Console()

# Basic print with markup
console.print("Hello, [bold magenta]World[/bold magenta]!")
console.print("[red]Error:[/red] Something went wrong")
console.print("[green]Success![/green] Deployment complete")
console.print("[italic]Hint:[/italic] Use --help for more info")

# Links
console.print("[link=https://example.com]Click here[/link]")

# Styled text object
text = Text("Hello World")
text.stylize("bold", 0, 5)
text.stylize("red", 6, 11)
console.print(text)

# Emoji support
console.print(":rocket: Deploying... :white_check_mark: Done!")

Tables

from rich.console import Console
from rich.table import Table

console = Console()

table = Table(title="Server Status")
table.add_column("Service", style="cyan", no_wrap=True)
table.add_column("Status", style="green")
table.add_column("Port", justify="right")
table.add_column("Uptime", justify="right")

table.add_row("API Gateway", "[green]Running[/green]", "8080", "14d 3h")
table.add_row("Database", "[green]Running[/green]", "5432", "14d 3h")
table.add_row("Cache", "[yellow]Degraded[/yellow]", "6379", "2h 15m")
table.add_row("Worker", "[red]Stopped[/red]", "N/A", "0s")

console.print(table)

Progress Bars

from rich.progress import Progress, track
import time

# Simple track
for item in track(range(100), description="Processing..."):
    time.sleep(0.02)

# Advanced progress
with Progress() as progress:
    task1 = progress.add_task("[cyan]Downloading...", total=1000)
    task2 = progress.add_task("[green]Installing...", total=500)

    while not progress.finished:
        progress.update(task1, advance=5)
        progress.update(task2, advance=2)
        time.sleep(0.02)

Common Components

Panels and Layout

from rich.console import Console
from rich.panel import Panel
from rich.columns import Columns
from rich.layout import Layout

console = Console()

# Panel
console.print(Panel("Hello World", title="Greeting", border_style="green"))

# Panel with rich content
console.print(Panel.fit(
    "[bold]Server Info[/bold]\n"
    "Host: [cyan]web-01[/cyan]\n"
    "Status: [green]healthy[/green]\n"
    "Load: [yellow]0.75[/yellow]",
    title="Dashboard",
    border_style="blue",
))

# Columns
cols = Columns(["Item 1", "Item 2", "Item 3", "Item 4"], equal=True, expand=True)
console.print(cols)

Trees

from rich.tree import Tree
from rich.console import Console

console = Console()

tree = Tree("[bold]Project Structure[/bold]")
src = tree.add("[blue]src/[/blue]")
src.add("[green]main.py[/green]")
src.add("[green]utils.py[/green]")
models = src.add("[blue]models/[/blue]")
models.add("[green]user.py[/green]")
models.add("[green]post.py[/green]")
tests = tree.add("[blue]tests/[/blue]")
tests.add("[green]test_main.py[/green]")
tree.add("[yellow]pyproject.toml[/yellow]")

console.print(tree)

Syntax Highlighting

from rich.console import Console
from rich.syntax import Syntax

console = Console()

code = '''
def fibonacci(n):
    if n <= 1:
        return n
    return fibonacci(n - 1) + fibonacci(n - 2)

print(fibonacci(10))
'''

syntax = Syntax(code, "python", theme="monokai", line_numbers=True)
console.print(syntax)

# From file
syntax = Syntax.from_path("main.py", line_numbers=True)
console.print(syntax)

Markdown

from rich.console import Console
from rich.markdown import Markdown

console = Console()

md = Markdown("""
# Status Report

## Summary
Everything is **running smoothly**.

## Metrics
- Response time: `45ms`
- Error rate: `0.01%`
- Uptime: `99.99%`

## Next Steps
1. Deploy v2.0
2. Monitor metrics
3. Update documentation
""")
console.print(md)

Configuration

Console Options

from rich.console import Console

# Custom console
console = Console(
    width=120,
    force_terminal=True,
    color_system="truecolor",
    record=True,
)

# File output
with open("output.html", "w") as f:
    console = Console(record=True)
    console.print("[bold red]Error report[/bold red]")
    f.write(console.export_html())

# Stderr console
err_console = Console(stderr=True)
err_console.print("[red]Error: connection failed[/red]")

Rich Tracebacks

from rich.traceback import install

# Install rich tracebacks globally
install(show_locals=True)

# Now all exceptions render beautifully
def divide(a, b):
    return a / b

divide(1, 0)  # Rich traceback with local variables

Logging Integration

import logging
from rich.logging import RichHandler

logging.basicConfig(
    level=logging.INFO,
    format="%(message)s",
    datefmt="[%X]",
    handlers=[RichHandler(rich_tracebacks=True)],
)

log = logging.getLogger("rich")
log.info("Server started")
log.warning("High memory usage")
log.error("Connection failed")

Advanced Usage

Live Display

from rich.live import Live
from rich.table import Table
import time

def generate_table(count):
    table = Table()
    table.add_column("ID")
    table.add_column("Status")
    for i in range(count):
        table.add_row(str(i), "[green]Active[/green]")
    return table

with Live(generate_table(0), refresh_per_second=4) as live:
    for i in range(20):
        time.sleep(0.3)
        live.update(generate_table(i + 1))

Prompt and Input

from rich.prompt import Prompt, Confirm, IntPrompt

name = Prompt.ask("Enter your name", default="World")
age = IntPrompt.ask("Enter your age", default=25)
confirm = Confirm.ask("Continue?")

# With choices
color = Prompt.ask("Pick a color", choices=["red", "green", "blue"])

Status Spinners

from rich.console import Console
import time

console = Console()

with console.status("[bold green]Deploying...") as status:
    time.sleep(2)
    status.update("[bold blue]Running migrations...")
    time.sleep(2)
    status.update("[bold yellow]Restarting services...")
    time.sleep(1)

console.print("[bold green]Deploy complete!")

Inspect Objects

from rich import inspect

inspect(list, methods=True)
inspect("hello", all=True)

Troubleshooting

Issue	Solution
No colors in output	Check terminal supports ANSI; use force_terminal=True
Width issues in CI	Set Console(width=120) explicitly
Emoji not rendering	Check terminal font supports Unicode
Table truncated	Increase console width or use overflow="fold"
Progress bar flickering	Reduce refresh_per_second
Markup not parsing	Escape brackets with \[ or use highlight=False

# Debug: check terminal capabilities
from rich.console import Console
console = Console()
console.print(f"Color system: {console.color_system}")
console.print(f"Width: {console.width}")
console.print(f"Is terminal: {console.is_terminal}")