TTY_INTERACTIVE env var

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -16,6 +16,10 @@ and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0
 
 - Fixed extraction of recursive exceptions https://github.com/Textualize/rich/pull/3772
 
+### Added
+
+- Added `TTY_INTERACTIVE` environment variable to force interactive mode off or on https://github.com/Textualize/rich/pull/3777
+
 ## [14.0.0] - 2025-03-30
 
 ### Added

docs/source/console.rst

@@ -405,13 +405,13 @@ If Rich detects that it is not writing to a terminal it will strip control codes
 
 Letting Rich auto-detect terminals is useful as it will write plain text when you pipe output to a file or other application.
 
+.. _interactive_mode:
+
 Interactive mode
 ----------------
 
-Rich will remove animations such as progress bars and status indicators when not writing to a terminal as you probably don't want to write these out to a text file (for example). You can override this behavior by setting the ``force_interactive`` argument on the constructor. Set it to True to enable animations or False to disable them.
+Rich will remove animations such as progress bars and status indicators when not writing to a terminal as you probably don't want to write these out to a text file (for example). You can override this behavior by setting the ``force_interactive`` argument on the constructor. Set it to ``True`` to enable animations or ``False`` to disable them.
 
-.. note::
-    Some CI systems support ANSI color and style but not anything that moves the cursor or selectively refreshes parts of the terminal. For these you might want to set ``force_terminal`` to ``True`` and ``force_interactive`` to ``False``.
 
 Environment variables
 ---------------------
@@ -429,8 +429,11 @@ If the environment variable ``NO_COLOR`` is set, Rich will disable all color in
 
 The environment variable ``TTY_COMPATIBLE`` is used to override Rich's auto-detection of terminal support. If ``TTY_COMPATIBLE`` is set to ``1`` then Rich will assume it is writing to a device which can handle escape sequences like a terminal. If ``TTY_COMPATIBLE`` is set to ``"0"``, then Rich will assume that it is writing to a device that is *not* capable of displaying escape sequences (such as a regular file). If the variable is not set, or set to a value other than "0" or "1", then Rich will attempt to auto-detect terminal support.
 
+The environment variable ``TTY_INTERACTIVE`` is used to override Rich's auto-detection of :ref:`interactive_mode`. If you set this to ``"0"``, it will disable interactive mode even if Rich thinks it is writing to a terminal. Set this to ``"1"`` to force interactive mode on. If this environment variable is not set, or set to any other value, then interactive mode will be auto-detected as normal.
+
 .. note::
-    If you want Rich output in CI or Github Actions, then you should set ``TTY_COMPATIBLE=1``.
+    If you want Rich output in CI or Github Actions, then you should set ``TTY_COMPATIBLE=1`` and ``TTY_INTERACTIVE=0``. The combination of both these variables tells rich that it can output escape sequences,
+    and also that there is no user interacting with the terminal -- so it won't bother animating progress bars.
 
 If ``width`` / ``height`` arguments are not explicitly provided as arguments to ``Console`` then the environment variables ``COLUMNS`` / ``LINES`` can be used to set the console width / height. ``JUPYTER_COLUMNS`` / ``JUPYTER_LINES`` behave similarly and are used in Jupyter.
 

rich/console.py

@@ -22,18 +22,20 @@
     Dict,
     Iterable,
     List,
+    Literal,
     Mapping,
     NamedTuple,
     Optional,
+    Protocol,
     TextIO,
     Tuple,
     Type,
     Union,
     cast,
+    runtime_checkable,
 )
 
 from rich._null_file import NULL_FILE
-from typing import Literal, Protocol, runtime_checkable
 
 from . import errors, themes
 from ._emoji_replace import _emoji_replace
@@ -731,6 +733,14 @@ def __init__(
             if no_color is not None
             else self._environ.get("NO_COLOR", "") != ""
         )
+        if force_interactive is None:
+            tty_interactive = self._environ.get("TTY_INTERACTIVE", None)
+            if tty_interactive is not None:
+                if tty_interactive == "0":
+                    force_interactive = False
+                elif tty_interactive == "1":
+                    force_interactive = True
+
         self.is_interactive = (
             (self.is_terminal and not self.is_dumb_terminal)
             if force_interactive is None

rich/diagnose.py

@@ -26,6 +26,7 @@ def report() -> None:  # pragma: no cover
         "TERM_PROGRAM",
         "TERM",
         "TTY_COMPATIBLE",
+        "TTY_INTERACTIVE",
         "VSCODE_VERBOSE_LOGGING",
     )
     env = {name: os.getenv(name) for name in env_names}

tests/test_console.py

@@ -1038,6 +1038,31 @@ def test_capture_and_record() -> None:
     assert recorded_content == "Print 0\n"
 
 
+def test_tty_interactive() -> None:
+    """Check TTY_INTERACTIVE environment var."""
+
+    # Bytes file, not interactive
+    console = Console(file=io.BytesIO())
+    assert not console.is_interactive
+
+    # Bytes file, force interactive
+    console = Console(file=io.BytesIO(), _environ={"TTY_INTERACTIVE": "1"})
+    assert console.is_interactive
+
+    # Force tty compatible, should be interactive
+    console = Console(file=io.BytesIO(), _environ={"TTY_COMPATIBLE": "1"})
+    assert console.is_interactive
+
+    # Force tty compatible, force not interactive
+    console = Console(
+        file=io.BytesIO(), _environ={"TTY_COMPATIBLE": "1", "TTY_INTERACTIVE": "0"}
+    )
+
+    # Bytes file, Unknown value of TTY_INTERACTIVE should still auto-detect
+    console = Console(file=io.BytesIO(), _environ={"TTY_INTERACTIVE": "foo"})
+    assert not console.is_interactive
+
+
 def test_tty_compatible() -> None:
     """Check TTY_COMPATIBLE environment var."""