zsh-autosuggestions

Fish-like fast/unobtrusive autosuggestions for zsh.

It suggests commands as you type, based on command history.

Installation

1. Clone this repository somewhere on your machine. This guide will assume ~/.zsh/zsh-autosuggestions.

   git clone git://github.com/tarruda/zsh-autosuggestions ~/.zsh/zsh-autosuggestions
   

2. Add the following to your .zshrc:

   source ~/.zsh/zsh-autosuggestions/dist/autosuggestions.zsh
   autosuggest_start
   

   Note: If you're using other zle plugins like zsh-syntax-highlighting or zsh-history-substring-search, check out the section on compatibility below.

Usage

As you type commands, you will see a completion offered after the cursor in a muted gray color. This color can be changed by setting the ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_HIGHLIGHT_STYLE variable. See configuration.

If you press the → key (forward-char widget) or End (end-of-line widget) with the cursor at the end of the buffer, it will accept the suggestion, replacing the contents of the command line buffer with the suggestion.

If you invoke the forward-word widget, it will partially accept the suggestion up to the point that the cursor moves to.

Configuration

You may want to override the default global config variables after sourcing the plugin. Default values of these variables can be found here.

Suggestion Highlight Style

Set ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_HIGHLIGHT_STYLE to configure the style that the suggestion is shown with. The default is fg=8.

Widget Mapping

This plugin works by triggering custom behavior when certain zle widgets are invoked. You can add and remove widgets from these arrays to change the behavior of this plugin:

• ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_CLEAR_WIDGETS: Widgets in this array will clear the suggestion when invoked.
• ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_MODIFY_WIDGETS: Widgets in this array will modify the buffer and fetch a new suggestion when invoked.
• ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_ACCEPT_WIDGETS: Widgets in this array will accept the suggestion when invoked.
• ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_PARTIAL_ACCEPT_WIDGETS: Widgets in this array will partially accept the suggestion when invoked.

Note: These arrays must be set before calling autosuggest_start.

Note: A widget shouldn't belong to more than one of the above arrays.

Key Bindings

This plugin provides two widgets that you can use with bindkey:

1. autosuggest-accept: Accepts the current suggestion.
2. autosuggest-clear: Clears the current suggestion.

For example, this would bind ctrl + space to accept the current suggestion.

bindkey '^ ' autosuggest-accept

Compatibility With Other ZLE Plugins

zsh-syntax-highlighting

Source zsh-autosuggestions.zsh before zsh-syntax-highlighting.

Call autosuggest_start after sourcing zsh-syntax-highlighting.

For example:

source ~/.zsh/zsh-autosuggestions/dist/autosuggestions.zsh
source ~/.zsh/zsh-syntax-highlighting/zsh-syntax-highlighting.zsh

autosuggest_start

zsh-history-substring-search

When the buffer is empty and one of the history-substring-search-up/down widgets is invoked, it will call the up/down-line-or-history widget. If the up/down-line-or-history widgets are in ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_CLEAR_WIDGETS (the list of widgets that clear the suggestion), this can create an infinite recursion, crashing the shell session.

For best results, you'll want to remove up-line-or-history and down-line-or-history from ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_CLEAR_WIDGETS:

# Remove *-line-or-history widgets from list of widgets that clear the autosuggestion to avoid conflict with history-substring-search-* widgets
ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_CLEAR_WIDGETS=("${(@)ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_CLEAR_WIDGETS:#(up|down)-line-or-history}")

Additionally, the history-substring-search-up and history-substring-search-down widgets are not bound by default. You'll probably want to add them to ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_CLEAR_WIDGETS so that the suggestion will be cleared when you start searching through history:

# Add history-substring-search-* widgets to list of widgets that clear the autosuggestion
ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_CLEAR_WIDGETS+=(history-substring-search-up history-substring-search-down)

Make sure you add/remove these widgets before calling autosuggest_start.

For example:

source ~/.zsh/zsh-autosuggestions/dist/autosuggestions.zsh
source ~/Code/zsh-history-substring-search/zsh-history-substring-search.zsh

ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_CLEAR_WIDGETS=("${(@)ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_CLEAR_WIDGETS:#(up|down)-line-or-history}")
ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_CLEAR_WIDGETS+=(history-substring-search-up history-substring-search-down)

autosuggest_start

Troubleshooting

If you have a problem, please search through the list of issues on GitHub to see if someone else has already reported it.

Reporting an Issue

Before reporting an issue, please try temporarily disabling sections of your configuration and other plugins that may be conflicting with this plugin to isolate the problem.

When reporting an issue, please include:

• The smallest, simplest .zshrc configuration that will reproduce the problem
• The version of zsh you're using (zsh --version)
• Which operating system you're running

Uninstallation

1. Remove the code referencing this plugin from ~/.zshrc.

2. Remove the git repository from your hard drive

   rm -rf ~/.zsh/zsh-autosuggestions # Or wherever you installed
   

Development

Build Process

Edit the source files in src/. Run make to build dist/autosuggestions.zsh from those source files.

Pull Requests

Pull requests are welcome! If you send a pull request, please:

• Match the existing coding conventions.
• Include helpful comments to keep the barrier-to-entry low for people new to the project.
• Write tests that cover your code as much as possible.

Testing

Testing is performed with shunit2 (v2.1.6). Documentation can be found here.

The test script lives at script/test.zsh. To run the tests, run make test.

License

This project is licensed under MIT license.
For the full text of the license, see the LICENSE file.