spinners
Spinners for terminals
What it is and what it does
Spinners is a Python wrapper that exposes more than 60 terminal spinner animations as an enum. Each spinner entry contains frame sequences (the individual characters to display) and an interval (the millisecond delay between frames). You import the Spinners enum and access individual spinners by name to retrieve their animation data as dictionaries.
The package is intended as a data source for building terminal loading indicators—it does not render or animate spinners itself, only provides the animation definitions. It depends on enum34 for enum support.
Use it for:
- Retrieve spinner frame data to build a custom terminal loading indicator in your CLI tool
- Populate a progress display with pre-defined animation sequences without hardcoding frame strings
- Access standardized spinner definitions across multiple projects via a shared enum
- Prototype terminal UI elements that need animated busy indicators
Worth the install?
AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying
Provides an enum of more than 60 pre-defined terminal spinner animations with frame data and timing, accessible as a Python enum for building loading indicators.
Yes, if you need a curated set of terminal spinner definitions for a CLI tool and want to avoid hardcoding animation frames. The low install friction and permissive MIT license make it a lightweight addition. However, maintenance is dormant (last release 2020-02-19); if you need active support or updates to spinner definitions, evaluate alternatives first.
Install
spinners on PyPI
pip
pip install spinnersuv
uv add spinnerspoetry
poetry add spinnersInstalling spinners
Before you install
Low install friction with a single lightweight dependency (enum34). Maintenance is dormant—last release was 2020-02-19 and no commits since 2024-07-31—but the package is stable and has 247 repository stars.
License in practice
MIT license is permissive and imposes no restrictions on use, modification, or distribution in your own projects.
Quickstart
from spinners import Spinners
print(Spinners.line.value)
# Output: {'frames': ['-', '\\', '|', '/'], 'interval': 130}
Verify before relying
- Whether enum34 is required only for Python 2 compatibility and can be skipped on Python 3.4+
- Whether the spinner data is current with the upstream cli-spinners library or has diverged
- Active maintenance status and likelihood of updates to spinner definitions
Package facts
| License | MIT (permissive) |
| Python support | not specified |
| Install friction | low — pure-Python wheel |
| Runtime dependencies | 1 — enum34 |
| Maintenance | dormant — 2,368 days since the last release |
| Last repo commit | |
| First released | |
| Downloads | 1,867,368/month — #3,477 on PyPI (30-day window, as of 2026-08-14) |
| Known vulnerabilities | none known (OSV.dev, checked 2026-08-14) |
Evidence: spinners-0.0.24-py3-none-any.whl
Keywords: cli, spinner, spinners, terminal, term, console, ascii, unicode, loading, indicator, progress, busy, wait, idle, json
Tags
More Terminals packages
Wraps any iterable to display a real-time…
copyleft · top 100 on PyPI
richRich renders styled text, tables, progress…
permissive · top 100 on PyPI
coloramaColorama makes ANSI escape sequences for…
permissive · top 100 on PyPI
wcwidthMeasures the displayed width of Unicode strings…
permissive · top 1,000 on PyPI
ptyprocessRun a subprocess in a pseudo terminal (pty) and…
permissive · top 1,000 on PyPI
pexpectPexpect spawns and controls interactive console…
permissive · top 1,000 on PyPI
haloHalo displays animated spinners in the terminal…
permissive · top 5,000 on PyPI
yaspinYaspin displays an animated terminal spinner to…
permissive · top 5,000 on PyPI
click-spinnerDisplays a simple animated spinner in the…
permissive · top 5,000 on PyPI
progressProvides terminal progress bars and spinners…
permissive · top 5,000 on PyPI
alive-progressDisplays an animated progress bar in the…
permissive · top 5,000 on PyPI
types-click-spinnerProvides type stubs for the click-spinner…
permissive · top 15,000 on PyPI
progressbar2progressbar2 renders text-based progress bars…
permissive · top 5,000 on PyPI
terminaltexteffectsRenders animated visual effects for text…
permissive · top 15,000 on PyPI
ascii-colorsUnified terminal UI library providing colored…
permissive · top 15,000 on PyPI
log-symbolsProvides colored Unicode symbols (✔, ℹ, ⚠, ✖)…
permissive · top 5,000 on PyPI