A
console application is a
computer program designed to be used via a text-only computer interface, such as a
text terminal, the
command line interface of some
operating systems (
Unix,
DOS, etc.) or the text-based interface included with most
Graphical User Interface (GUI) operating systems, such as the
Win32 console in
Microsoft Windows, the
Terminal in
Mac OS X, and
xterm in Unix. A user typically interacts with a console application using only a
keyboard and
display screen, as opposed to GUI applications, which normally require the use of a
mouse or other
pointing device. Many console applications such as
command line interpreters are
command line tools, but numerous
text-based user interface (TUI) programs also exist.