---
id: spinners
version: "0.0.24"
license: MIT
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: dormant
---

# spinners — Spinners for terminals

License: permissive · Maintenance: dormant · Downloads: 1.9M/mo

## 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 above — 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

pip install spinners
uv add spinners
poetry add spinners

## Installing 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: unspecified
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: dormant
- Downloads: 1.9M/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

terminal spinner animations, cli loading indicators, progress spinners enum, terminal loading animation, ascii spinner frames, console busy indicator, terminal wait animation, cli-ui, terminal-animation

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