vanta

Your machine, one pane.

A fast, aesthetic terminal system dashboard in Rust. The most complete keyboard-driven terminal dashboard — one pane, four modes, zero mouse.

Vanta collapses everything you care about into one terminal pane: CPU, memory, disk, network, GPU, processes, now-playing, a block-digit clock, a calendar, and an audio visualizer. Keyboard only. ~3 MB binary, ~2–5% CPU at the default 30 fps.

npm install -g @ziuus/vanta && vanta

Install

One-liner, no install:

npx @ziuus/vanta@latest

Requirements

Linux (vanta reads /proc and /sys). Building from source also needs libdbus:

sudo pacman -S dbus              # Arch
sudo apt install libdbus-1-dev   # Debian / Ubuntu
sudo dnf install dbus-devel      # Fedora

Optional tools that light up extra panels — vanta degrades quietly without them:

| Tool | Unlocks | |------|---------| | cava | Audio visualizer (falls back to an idle wave) | | nmcli | Wi-Fi SSID + signal strength | | nvidia-smi | NVIDIA GPU utilisation, VRAM, temp | | docker | Running-container count | | checkupdates | Pending Arch package updates |

Managing vanta

vanta --version                 # what am I running
vanta --help                    # usage + keys

npm update -g @ziuus/vanta      # update  (npm)
npm uninstall -g @ziuus/vanta   # remove  (npm)

cargo install --git https://github.com/ziuus/vanta --force   # update  (cargo)
cargo uninstall vanta                                        # remove  (cargo)

rm -rf ~/.config/vanta          # drop config + persisted theme/page

Where things live:

| Path | What | |------|------| | ~/.config/vanta/config.toml | Config, plus the theme / page / visualizer vanta persists for you | | $(npm root -g)/@ziuus/vanta/bin/ | The npm-installed binary | | ~/.cargo/bin/vanta | The cargo-installed binary |

Vanta respects XDG_CONFIG_HOME if you set it.

Pages

| Key | Page | What's on it | |-----|------|--------------| | 1 | Dashboard | System facts + distro logo, semicircle gauges, CPU graph & cores, storage, big clock, now playing, visualizer, top processes, interactive status, memory, network, calendar | | 2 | Monitor | btop-style: CPU / memory / disk I/O / network / GPU graphs on top, full process table below (sort, filter, tree, kill) | | 3 | Aesthetic | Huge clock, calendar, matrix rain, spinning donut, pinned media (photos), full-width visualizer | | 4 | Workspace | Built-in File Manager (with image previews), Agenda, Tasks, RSS feeds, and Obsidian vault viewer | | ? | Help | Keybind reference overlay |

2 — Monitor

Every graph on top, every process below. Sort it, filter it, tree it, kill it.

3 — Aesthetic

For when the build is running and you want something to look at. Includes support for displaying a custom pinned image.

4 — Workspace

Turn your terminal into a productivity hub with a built-in file manager (with image previews), RSS news reader, tasks, agenda, and Obsidian vault viewer (with markdown syntax highlighting). Press e on any focused panel to edit the content in your $EDITOR.

? — Help

Every key, on screen, on any page.

Keys

| Key | Action | |-----|--------| | 1 2 3 4 | Switch page (persisted as startup page) | | Tab / Shift-Tab | Cycle panel focus · Esc clears | | Enter | Zoom the focused panel to the full page · Esc back | | T | Next theme (persisted) | | v | Visualizer style: bars / mirror / wave / peaks | | + / - | Sample faster / slower | | Space n p | Play/pause · next · previous (MPRIS, any page) | | < > | Volume down / up | | ? | Help overlay | | q | Quit | | ~ / F12 | Toggle Debug Logs overlay (s saves them to file) | | S / , | Open Settings overlay | | Ctrl + ←/→ | Resize dashboard columns horizontally (when focused) | | Ctrl + ↑/↓ | Resize dashboard components vertically (when focused) |

Processes (Monitor): ↑↓ PgUp PgDn Home End select · / filter (Enter keeps, Esc clears) · s sort field · r reverse · t tree · ←→ fold · c full command · k SIGTERM · K SIGKILL (press twice to confirm, x cancels)

Workspace: e opens the active note, agenda, task list, or file in your $EDITOR.

Calendar (focused): ←→ month · ↑↓ year · Home today

Themes

dark · catppuccin · tokyo-night · nord · gruvbox · dracula · light · solarized-light

Cycle with T — your choice is written back to the config file.

Custom Themes

You can easily load custom themes dynamically without recompiling Vanta.

1. Create a themes folder inside your config directory (e.g. ~/.config/vanta/themes/).
2. Drop in a .toml file with your theme name (e.g., cyberpunk.toml).
3. Define your colors using hex codes:

   bg = "#000000"
   accent = "#00ff00"
   secondary = "#ff00ff"
   surface = "#111111"
   text = "#ffffff"
   dim = "#555555"
   green = "#00ff00"
   yellow = "#ffff00"
   red = "#ff0000"

4. Press T in Vanta to cycle to it, or set it explicitly in your config.toml (theme = "cyberpunk").

Configuration & Customization

Vanta is highly configurable via ~/.config/vanta/config.toml. You can:

• Change the layout, refresh rates, and themes
• Add your own Custom Widgets using shell commands or files
• Install community-built WASM Extensions to add entirely new UI panels without recompiling

For a complete guide to all configuration options, extensions, and custom widgets, please read: 👉 docs/CONFIGURATION.md

Architecture

All telemetry is collected on a single background sampler thread (/proc, /sys, sysinfo, D-Bus) into lock-guarded snapshots; the render loop only reads snapshots and never blocks on I/O.

| Layer | Technology | |-------|------------| | TUI | Ratatui 0.29 + Crossterm | | Telemetry | sysinfo, /proc, /sys/class/{hwmon,drm,power_supply} | | GPU | NVIDIA (nvidia-smi), AMD (sysfs), Intel (clock only) | | Media | MPRIS over D-Bus (dbus crate) | | Audio viz | cava raw output, idle wave fallback |

Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome — bug reports, new themes, new panels, or a GPU vendor that isn't covered yet.

git clone https://github.com/ziuus/vanta && cd vanta
cargo run --release

# CI runs exactly this — make it pass first
cargo fmt --all -- --check
cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings
cargo test

Read CONTRIBUTING.md first — it covers how the code is laid out, the sampler-thread rule (never do I/O inside a render()), the panel degradation contract, and how to add a theme.

Good first contributions:

• A new theme in src/theme.rs (add a constructor + its name to THEME_NAMES)
• Per-interface network stats
• NVMe / extra hwmon temperature sources
• Mouse click-to-focus

License

MIT — do what you like, keep the notice.