For me personally, it also has something to do with TUIs feeling more 'snappy' and reliable than many GUIs. For example, when I'm scrolling in Slack to get to previous messages, I'm often looking at blank space while messages load. Or when I open a search engine in Safari, often I cannot type in the search box without clicking on it first. Or in a JetBrains IDE I try to type code but the file navigator still has focus and now I'm using the 'file search' modus which I did not intend to use. I almost never have these issues with TUIs. They're mostly fast and behave like I expect. Can't think of how to explain this better right now.

In theory I like GUIs better as you can do a lot more with them, but they disappoint me so often that I often prefer a TUI (or a commandline tool).

I think this isn't due to the TUI itself (and this one isn't text, it has images in!) but downstream of a whole load of other choices. You rarely have this with game UIs, for example.

It's not just the use of immediate mode, but a whole stack of design decisions to prioritize snappiness.

Consider how quickly conhost.exe starts compared to the new cmd.exe

Most of it is because of ancillary stuff and heavy dependencies.

Modern GUI frameworks are a bit of a dumpster fire. They're unresponsive mess with poor contrast, frequently based around elements designed for a 7" touch screen[1], despite primarily being used with mouse and keyboard input and a full sized monitor.

[1] Like hamburger menus. These make zero sense in a desktop GUI. They make perfect sense on a small vertical screen, but horizontal screen space is just not a scarce commodity on a 27" screen. All these things accomplish is making a button that's harder to accurately click.

For me, it's much more about my workflow. I spend a lot of time in the terminal anyway, and running things there means a lighter context switch. Moving between apps (=panes), zooming, copy-pasting, all works the same.

I don't like using them so much as I've gotten older, but they are simpler to build, more fun to build, the design options aren't as open-ended, and the tooling is pretty good and crossplatform.

The idiosyncrasy of a GUI in your terminal is also part of its charm, especially in how it looks.

I think it's similar to the appeal of making a webapp in a fun tech like Elm except it has access to the filesystem and can do whatever it wants, so it's also less limiting.

It's probably because TUIs are inferior and limited in their abilities compared to GUI or WebUI, so the creators are putting more work into polishing them in what they can deliver, ending in an overall better user experience in their specific area.

I think it's a desire for minimalism. In a world filled with websites saturated with ads, clickbait and constant attention grabs, this is like walking from an overcrowded city street into a Zen garden.

It's an app for browsing lists of anime. How is this not a constant stream of attention grabs?

Well, if someone opens this app their goal probably is browsing lists of anime, so the attention grabs you're hinting at are intentional, and thus not 'attention grabs' in the sense the parent commenter is talking about.

Yeah that makes a lot of sense, my mistake for posting before coffee.

Attention grab here surely means something grabbing your attention away from what you're trying to look at.

The main benefits are that programs are lightweight, snappy, and cross-platform.

Same reason I use vim: staying in the terminal with just my keyboard feels efficient, even if it’s just for fun.

Apart from the benefits you already mentioned, mainly that TUI applications are usually keyboard driven.