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What is ui-tars?

bytedance/ui-tars — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-06-24

10,527PythonAudience · researcherComplexity · 4/5Setup · hard

In one sentence

An AI agent from ByteDance that looks at a computer or phone screen and performs tasks by clicking, typing, and navigating, you give it a goal in plain English and it works out the steps itself, on desktop, mobile, and web browsers.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((UI-TARS))
    What it does
      Understands screens
      Clicks and types
      Multi-step reasoning
    Supported Platforms
      Windows macOS Linux
      Android mobile
      Web browsers
    Tech Stack
      Python
      Vision language model
      Reinforcement learning
    Use Cases
      Task automation
      UI testing
      Research benchmarks
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What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Automate repetitive desktop or browser tasks by describing them in plain English instead of writing step-by-step code

USE CASE 2

Test web or mobile app interfaces automatically by having the agent navigate and complete tasks from a goal description

USE CASE 3

Build a computer-use assistant that operates a real desktop to fill forms, search the web, or manage files

USE CASE 4

Research and benchmark AI agent performance on standardized GUI automation tests for browser and desktop tasks

What is it built with?

PythonPyTorchHugging Face

How does it compare?

bytedance/ui-tarsamueller/word_cloudostris/ai-toolkit
Stars10,52710,53210,545
LanguagePythonPythonPython
Setup difficultyhardeasyhard
Complexity4/52/54/5
Audienceresearcherdevelopervibe coder

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · hard Time to first run · 1day+

Requires deploying a large vision-language model via Hugging Face before you can call it, no lightweight local option described.

So what is it?

UI-TARS is an AI agent from ByteDance that can look at a computer screen or phone screen and perform actions on it, just as a human would by clicking, typing, scrolling, and navigating. The model is trained to understand what it sees visually and then figure out what actions to take to complete a given task. It can operate on desktop operating systems like Windows, macOS, and Linux, on mobile devices and Android emulators, and inside web browsers. The core idea is that instead of writing code to automate a specific task, you give the agent a goal in plain language and it works out the steps itself. The model can reason through a problem before taking action, which makes it more capable on tasks that require multiple steps or where the right path is not obvious from the start. Version 1.5 is built on a vision-language model combined with reinforcement learning training, which is how it develops that reasoning ability. Version 2, also called UI-TARS-2, extends the same approach to cover games, code tasks, and tool use on top of the original GUI capabilities. To use it, you deploy the model (the repository links to hosting options via Hugging Face) and then call it with a screenshot of the current screen along with a goal. The model returns a description of what action to take, such as clicking at a specific coordinate or typing a word. A post-processing library called ui-tars converts that output into executable code for controlling the mouse and keyboard. There is also a desktop application version in a separate repository for people who want to run the agent on their own machine without setting up the full deployment stack. Benchmark results show it performing competitively against other AI computer-use systems on standardized tests for browser automation and desktop task completion.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
I've deployed UI-TARS from Hugging Face. Write Python code to send it a screenshot of my browser with the goal 'Find the cheapest flight from London to Paris next week' and execute the returned action using the ui-tars library.
Prompt 2
Using UI-TARS, build a loop that takes a screenshot every 2 seconds, sends it to the model with a task goal, parses the action response, and moves the mouse or types accordingly.
Prompt 3
What is the difference between UI-TARS 1.5 and UI-TARS-2 in terms of supported task types? Which version should I use for pure browser automation versus coding tasks?
Prompt 4
Show me how to point UI-TARS at an Android emulator and have it complete a multi-step task inside a mobile app given a natural language goal.

Frequently asked questions

What is ui-tars?

An AI agent from ByteDance that looks at a computer or phone screen and performs tasks by clicking, typing, and navigating, you give it a goal in plain English and it works out the steps itself, on desktop, mobile, and web browsers.

What language is ui-tars written in?

Mainly Python. The stack also includes Python, PyTorch, Hugging Face.

How hard is ui-tars to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated hard, with roughly 1day+ to a first successful run.

Who is ui-tars for?

Mainly researcher.

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