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18 points · Open discussionsaulpw
visidata
Python2017–2026
saulpw / visidata
visidata
A terminal spreadsheet multitool for discovering and arranging data
27Distinct people
42Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
9.5KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
A terminal spreadsheet multitool for discovering and arranging data
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- sharkdp/bat · linked in 3 of the same discussions
- sharkdp/fd · linked in 3 of the same discussions
- asciinema/asciinema · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year42 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2017-05-31 05:02:51 UTC to 2026-09-24 01:14:43 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 9 | 0 | 9 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 2 | 3 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 1 | 5 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 2 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
VisiData v3.5
A terminal interface for exploring and arranging tabular data.
VisiData supports tsv, csv, sqlite, json, xlsx (Excel), hdf5, and many other formats.
Platform requirements
Linux, OS/X, or Windows (with WSL)
Python 3.8+
additional Python modules are required for certain formats and sources
Install
To install the latest release from PyPi:
pip3 install visidata
To try VisiData without installing, use pipx or uv:
pipx run visidata # or: uvx visidata
To install permanently (adds vd to your PATH):
pipx install visidata # or: uv tool install visidata
Additional Python packages are needed for some formats:
pipx install visidata --preinstall openpyxl --preinstall lxml
# or: uv tool install visidata --with openpyxl --with lxml
To add format packages to an existing pipx install:
pipx inject visidata openpyxl lxml
To install the cutting edge develop branch (no warranty expressed or implied):
pip3 install git+https://github.com/saulpw/visidata.git@develop
If VisiData reports package X not installed even after you installed it, vd
is almost certainly running from a different environment than the one you
installed the package into. Check which vd, then install the package into
that environment — e.g. pipx inject visidata X for a pipx install, or the
Homebrew Python for brew install visidata.
See visidata.org/install for detailed instructions for all available platforms and package managers.
Usage
$ vd <input>
$ <command> | vd
Press Ctrl+Q to quit at any time.
Hundreds of other commands and options are also available; see the documentation.
Documentation
VisiData documentation
Plugin Author's Guide and API Reference
Quick reference (available within vd with Ctrl+H), which has a list of commands and options.
Intro to VisiData Tutorial by Jeremy Singer-Vine
Help and Support
If you have a question, issue, or suggestion regarding VisiData, please create an issue on Github or chat with us at #visidata on irc.libera.chat.
If you use VisiData regularly, please support me on Patreon!
License
Code in the stable branch of this repository, including the main vd application, loaders, and plugins, is available for use and redistribution under GPLv3.
Credits
VisiData is conceived and developed by Saul Pwanson <vd@saul.pw>.
Anja Kefala <anja.kefala@gmail.com> maintains the documentation and packages for all platforms.
Many thanks to numerous other contributors, and to those wonderful users who provide feedback, for helping to make VisiData the awesome tool that it is.
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
42 sourcesVisidata: A terminal spreadsheet multitool for discovering and arranging data
2 points · Open discussionOther open source command line spreadsheets:
https://github.com/drclcomputers/GoSheet
https://github.com/xi/spreadsheet/
https://github.com/andmarti1424/sc-im
https://github.com/saulpw/visidata
https://github.com/bgreenwell/xleak
https://github.com/SamuelSchlesinger/tshts
https://github.com/CodeOne45/vex-tui
In VisiCalc ReconstructedA terminal spreadsheet multitool for discovering and arranging data
4 points · Open discussionTry asking on https://github.com/saulpw/visidata the community there can help.
I am seeing this issue on a Mac with ghostty but not with wezterm, from the same binary. Ghostty shows some correct characters and some diamond-question marks, and a line usually contains one or the other. The ghostty inspector shows the diamonds are not the blocks.
In Libghostty is comingI was extremely disappointed to recently learn that visidata(1) phones home, and that this functionality has not been disabled in the Debian package, despite many people requesting its removal:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1001647
https://github.com/saulpw/visidata/discussions/940
In Why does Debian change software?my quick and dirty version of this from march was http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/hiring.png. i only bothered to gather 7 years of data though
csv generation script at http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/whoishiring.py (taking as input http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/whoishiring.txt, copied and pasted from firefox), png generation script at http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/plothiring.py
it, uh, probably took me more than the 5 minutes it reportedly took chatgpt. more like two and a half hours, judging from time.ctime(os.stat('whoishiring.txt.~1~').st_mtime), although i think i ate dinner in the middle. clearly i should lean more on chatgpt
https://github.com/saulpw/visidata looks pretty cool!
In Analysing 10 years of 'who is hiring' HN datatried this out a while back and ultimately settled on visidata instead https://github.com/saulpw/visidata
In SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheetThis fx rewrite is very exciting. I'll have to try it. I thought of fx as a wrapper around jq, that allowed quick iteration over building jq scripts. Sort of an Ultimate Plumber [1] but only for jq. It looks like it is now more like a JavaScript processor plus an interactive viewer.
Someone mention Visidata[2]? VisiData is also a TUI that is great on tabular data, and it can work with json. If your JSON is mostly tabular in nature, Visidata does a great job at showing that data and allowing you to explore it. A lot of json I deal with is tabular-like data. There is a great tutorial [3], that can help you get your bearings with Visidata. Once you understand those basics you might want to look at this thread [4] for what commands you can use with json.
[1] Ultimate Plumber: https://github.com/akavel/up
[2] Visidata: https://github
Read the rest
.com/saulpw/visidata
[3] "Intro to VisiData Tutorial": https://jsvine.github.io/intro-to-visidata/ by Jeremy Singer-Vine
[4] "Is it possible to "flatten" structured data (like JSON?)": https://github.com/saulpw/visidata/discussions/1605
I also find VisiData is useful for adhoc exploring of JSON data. You can also use it to explore multiple other formats. I find it really helpful, plus it gives that little burst of adrenaline from its responsive TUI, similar to fx and jless mentioned.
For my toolbox I include jq, gron, miller, VisiData, in addition to classics like sed, awk, and perl.
- https://github.com/saulpw/visidata
- http://visidata.org/
Also there is a great introduction:
- https://jsvine.github.io/intro-to-visidata/ "Intro to VisiData Tutorial" by Jeremy Singer-Vine
In jq 1.7You seem to have a single line at the bottom of your CONTRIBUTING.md stating that contributors assign copyright to you. I doubt that this is worth anything legally. You have probably received and merged many contributions whose author didn't have the right to assign it to you, and having put no effort in checking that, you would probably be the one found in the wrong.
https://github.com/saulpw/visidata/blob/develop/CONTRIBUTING...
Also take a look at GitHub's ToS, which explicitly states that "inbound=outbound" is the default. I don't think you can expect people to hunt down your little notice when there is a site-wide default. https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...
In CLAs create different issues than making (small) open source contributionsThe VisiData developers created a fun multi-part data wrangling puzzle last year called the Hanukkah of Data [1].
It is not specific to any tool, so you can use command line tools,
the TUI data explorer VisiData[2] or whatever data tools you want to solve the puzzle in your terminal.
[1] https://hanukkah.bluebird.sh/5783/
[2] https://github.com/saulpw/visidata
In A command-line murder mystery (2014)If you are a command-line user, try visidata[0]
[0] https://github.com/saulpw/visidata
In Ask HN: I'm looking for some new spreadsheet software what are people using?Visidata 2.9.1 Released– Excel/CSV/JSON/SQLite/Parquet in the Terminal (TUI/CLI)
16 points · Open discussionSweet. Here’s my open issue with VisiData about this: https://github.com/saulpw/visidata/issues/1398
There’s a sample file at the end of that thread.
In Xlite: Query Excel and Open Document spreadsheets as SQLite virtual tablesShowing the 15 most recent of 42 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.