Text mode is a kind of computer display mode in which the content of the screen is internally represented in terms of textual characters rather than individual pixels. Typically, the screen consists of a uniform grid of character cells, each of which contains one of the characters of the character set. Text mode video rendering came to prominence in the early 1970s, when video-oriented text terminals started to replace teleprinters in the interactive use of computers.

Text mode applications communicate with the user with command-line interfaces and text user interfaces. Many character sets used in text mode applications also contain a limited set of predefined semi-graphical characters usable for drawing boxes and other rudimentary graphics which can be used to highlight the content or to simulate widget or control interface objects found in GUI programs. A typical example is the IBM code page 437 character set.

The advantages of text modes compared to graphics modes include lower memory consumption and faster screen manipulation. Also, text mode applications have relatively low bandwidth requirements in remote terminal use. An obvious disadvantage of text mode is the restricted screen content, which makes text mode impractical for many types of applications.

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