tmux-fuzzback

tmux-fuzzback uses a fuzzy finder to search terminal scrollback buffer, and jump to selected position.

Attribution

This plugin would not be possible without the work done in copycat. Go download it, use it, and give it some love. I also drew more than a little inspiration from tmux-fzf-url. Huge thanks to both.

Requirements

• tmux version >= 2.4
• A fuzzy finder
  • fzf
  • skim - Requires extra configuration

Installation

Using Tmux Plugin Manager (recommended)

set -g @plugin 'roosta/tmux-fuzzback'

Manually

git clone https://github.com/roosta/tmux-fuzzback.git

Add this to the bottom of .tmux.conf

run-shell ~/path/to/repo/fuzzback.tmux

Reload TMUX env

tmux source-file ~/.tmux.conf

Usage

To use tmux-fuzzback, start it in a tmux session by typing prefix + ?. Now you can start fuzzy searching in your scrollback buffer using fzf.

Options

Fuzzy finder

Fuzzback uses fzf as default, but you can set it to sk if you'd rather use skim

set -g @fuzzback-finder 'sk'

Fuzzback was built using fzf, and only later did I add support for skim. These two finders seem mostly comparable, although I might have missed something. Please open an issue if you find any problems with this or other.

Additionally the popup window doesn't seem to work in sk-tmux, I'm unable to open it on tmux next-3.4 and sk 0.10.2, so it isn't currently configured to work.

Key binding

The default key-binding is ? preceded by a prefix, it can be modified by setting value to @fuzzback-bind in the tmux config like this:

set -g @fuzzback-bind s

Make sure this setting is set before loading the plugin.

Enable popup

You can enable tmux popup by setting this variable in your tmux conf. Keep in mind that only recent versions 3.2 and above of tmux support this.

set -g @fuzzback-popup 1

Only works with fzf for the time being

Hide preview

Preview is shown by default, but you can hide it initially by setting fuzzback-hide-preview to 1.

set -g @fuzzback-hide-preview 1

You can still toggle it back with your preferred keybinding (fzf default ctrl+p)

Popup size

You can set the popup size with this option.

set -g @fuzzback-popup-size '90%'

Finder layout

You can reverse the direction of selected finder by setting this variable. The default is default

set -g @fuzzback-finder-layout 'reverse'

Finder bind

If you want to bind some keybinding using sk/fzf --bind that's only used in fuzzback set this variable.

set -g @fuzzback-finder-bind 'ctrl-y:execute-silent(echo -n {3..} | xsel -ib)+abort'

This will copy the line matches in selected finder to the clipboard if xsel is available.

Refer documentation for more:

• fzf documentation
• skim documentation

Toggling sort

If you need to toggle sort on and off you could add this to your fuzzback config

• ref: #23

set -g @fuzzback-finder-bind 'ctrl-s:toggle-sort'

FZF colors

You can add colors to fuzzback as you do with fzf.

set -g @fuzzback-fzf-colors 'bg+:#100E23,gutter:#323F4E,pointer:#F48FB1,info:#ffe6b3,hl:#F48FB1,hl+:#63f2f1'

All highlight options can be found in fzf's man page.

Keybind table

Normally the fuzzback keybind will go into the prefix table, but if you want to activate fuzzback without typing the prefix, you can change the table here. Say you wanted to activate fuzzback without prefix:

# this is the same as bind-key -n
set -g @fuzzback-table 'root'

Make sure this option, same as keybind, is set before loading the plugin.

Limitations

Column movement

Depending on the complexity of the search query, fuzzback might not know what column to move to, and will place you at the start of the line unless a literal match can be found.

Developing

You can run tests locally using Vagrant by calling:

# cd project root
./run_tests

License

MIT