Yazi as file picker for Helix with sway WM (no mulitplexer needed)

[lukeflo]

I just created a workaround to use yazi as file picker for Helix with sway window manager and foot terminal on Void Linux without the need of an extra terminal multiplexer (not the most common combination, but maybe some day someone is searching for it... 😁 ). Since Void hasn't as many prebuilt setups, this might be helpful for someone with similar needs:

For Helix PR #11164 is very helpful too.

sway config

Inside my sway config I added following line to make floating terminal windows possible:

for_window [app_id = "floating_foot"] floating enable

script

Furthermore, I need a small wrapper script which opens a new foot window with the correct app_id to make it float. The script is also necessary since it combines the yazi run and the following printing of the file path to stdout (fff is another possible file manager to use with this script):

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Send picker as $1, save selected filepath in cache file
# and print filepath to stdout using cat
# -a `floating_foot` sets app_id for floating term window
# -p option to fff saves selected filepath in tmp-file instead of opening
case "$1" in
fff)
    foot -a 'floating_foot' zsh -c 'fff -p' && cat "/home/lukeflo/.config/cache/fff/opened_file"
    ;;
yazi)
    tmp="$(mktemp -t yazi-picker.XXXXXX)"
    foot -a 'floating_foot' yazi --chooser-file "$tmp"
    cat -- "$tmp"
    rm -f -- "$tmp"
    ;;
*)
    echo "Unknown picker"
    ;;
esac

Helix shortcut

Finally, I just added the script call as shortcut to my config.toml:

[keys.normal.space]
"o" = [ ":open %sh{ sway-picker yazi }" ]

Now I can simply press space o in normal mode. A floating window running yazi (or fff) pops up and I can select a file which will be opened in my current Helix buffer...

[AnirudhG07]

Great Thank you so much! Can you make it into a repository, like yazi.nvim?? This will allow people to use configuration more easily. And it would be great if you could add it to yazi-rs and also awesome-yazi

[lukeflo]

Thanks. Would like to give it a try, but AFAICS all yazi plugins mentioned on your linked sites deal with some Lua code which integrates them with yazi itself. My code does not interact with yazi's codebase directly, it just uses sway and helix config settings to get a workaround. Thus, I'm not sure how to handle this. I could put the script into an own repo (sway-helix.yazi or similar) together with some install instructions inside the README if that is enough.

[AnirudhG07]

It is okay if it is not in Lua, since neovim plugins are based on Lua only. But helix, sway may not use Lua at all. I have not used helix so I am not aware how configurations work there.
Since helix does not have plugin system(afaik) you can name it however u like(I would recommend not using .yazi since it is not a Yazi plugin technically), check out other editor plugins mentioned in awesome-yazi link for more reference.

It would be great if you could provide a way for configurations for opening in split windows, or diff tabs, etc(if that is so in helix), along with various keybindings from within Yazi, just like yazi.nvim has(just an example).

[lukeflo]

OK, thanks for clarifying.

The latter is more tricky because of Helix. As of now, Helix API regarding such things is not very flexible. I can open the file in Helix only using command substitution from its internal command line. That's also only possible in a sophisticated way if Helix is built from source integrating an unmerged PR.

Opening the chosen file inside a new buffer, thus, is only possible using a second Helix command not a custom yazi keypress. That is very likely to change in the future when Helix is evolving.

[AnirudhG07]

Ok no problem. Looking forward to seeing your repo!