---
id: enlighten
version: "1.14.1"
license: MPLv2.0
license_treatment: copyleft
maintenance: active
---

# enlighten — Enlighten Progress Bar

License: copyleft · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 870.5K/mo

## What it is and what it does

Enlighten is a console progress bar library for Python that renders progress bars, counters, and status bars directly in the terminal. It solves the problem of displaying progress feedback while still allowing normal print() and logging calls to stdout and stderr without requiring output redirection or special handling. The library depends on blessed for terminal control, prefixed for unit formatting, and backports.functools-lru-cache for compatibility.

The typical workflow is to create a manager via get_manager(), then call methods like counter() or status_bar() to create individual progress indicators. Multiple bars can run concurrently, and they automatically disable themselves when output is not attached to a TTY. The library supports color, multicolored bars to track multiple categories, and custom formatting of bar appearance.

Use it for:

- Display progress during long-running batch jobs or data processing pipelines while logging intermediate results.
- Show multiple concurrent progress bars for parallel tasks, such as downloading multiple files or processing multiple datasets.
- Render status bars with dynamic variable updates to communicate application state changes in real time.
- Add colored progress indicators to CLI tools to improve user feedback without cluttering output with print statements.
- Track task completion in scripts that also write diagnostic logs, keeping both streams readable.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

Enlighten is a console progress bar library that displays progress bars, counters, and status bars in the terminal while allowing normal stdout/stderr output without redirection.

Yes. Enlighten is actively maintained, has no known vulnerabilities, low install friction, and solves a real problem—displaying progress without disrupting normal output. The MPLv2.0 copyleft license is permissive for most use cases. Install it if you need terminal progress bars in a Python CLI or batch tool.

## Install

pip install enlighten
uv add enlighten
poetry add enlighten

## Installing enlighten

Before you install: Low install friction with a pure-wheel distribution. Actively maintained as of 2026-05-21 with 534 repository stars and no known security vulnerabilities.

License in practice: Licensed under MPLv2.0 (copyleft). You may use and modify the package freely, but derivative works and distributions must retain the license and disclose source changes.

Quickstart:

pip install enlighten

import enlighten
import time

manager = enlighten.get_manager()
pbar = manager.counter(total=100, desc='Progress', unit='items')

for i in range(100):
    time.sleep(0.1)
    pbar.update()

Verify before relying:

- Jupyter Notebook support is described as 'experimental' but the fact sheet does not detail its maturity or limitations.
- Whether the library handles edge cases like very narrow terminal widths or non-UTF-8 encodings gracefully.

## Package facts

- License: MPLv2.0 (copyleft)
- Python support: unspecified
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 870.5K/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

progress bar library, terminal progress display, console counter, status bar terminal, python progress tracking, tty progress bar, multi-bar progress, terminal-ui, progress-tracking

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/enlighten) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/enlighten/)