Better Shell History Search
98 comments
·March 25, 2025jakebasile
radicality
I’ve started using Atuin based on a recommendation from here a few weeks ago. I generally like it, but feel like the fuzzy matching is bad - maybe I either misconfigured something or nobody else cares about it?
If the command I want to match against is within the last few days or so, the fuzzy match performs ok, but anything from months ago which I know for a fact is in the history, it just doesn’t match it and instead shows irrelevant items (which technically I’m sure according to some algorithm are correct). Another one is I often have to put a ^ to ensure the ‘curl’ I’m searching for starts looking for matches at beginning of line.
Often times I still fall back to using fzf on ~/.zsh_history which seems to get what I want. There is this thread which is same issues I’m seeing, and I did try smart_sort=True but it’s still not great.
https://forum.atuin.sh/t/understanding-atuin-history-search/...
hashworks
Try to add ' in front of words to find exact matches if the fuzzy search isn't providing the results you're looking for.
colordrops
If using Nix, you can get Atuin working basically for free by just enabling it in the config. I love it. Does everything I'd every hoped for with history search.
EasyMark
I don't really like nix (yeah I tried it for a couple of months), but I'd like to point out that atuin is exceptionally easy to set up even without using nix as well in case someone gets an idea that it is difficult.
sshine
I'm also in this boat. I have atuin as part of my zsh config that is distributed to all new machines, whether they run NixOS or some other operating system with Nix on them (e.g. MacOS). After switching to NixOS I found an interest in maintaining a custom setup again, since it wouldn't fall apart every time I moved machine.
{ pkgs, ... }:
{
users.defaultUserShell = pkgs.zsh;
environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
atuin # ^R
eza # ls
git
zsh
];
programs.direnv.enable = true;
programs.nix-direnv.enable = true;
programs.zsh = {
enable = true;
enableCompletion = true;
enableBashCompletion = true;
enableGlobalCompInit = true;
# https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting/blob/master/docs/highlighters.md
syntaxHighlighting.enable = true;
syntaxHighlighting.highlighters = [ "main" "brackets" ];
# See `man zshoptions` for more details.
setOptions = [
# Remove duplicates continuously from command history (preserve newest entry).
"HIST_IGNORE_DUPS"
# Instantly share command history between all active shells.
"SHARE_HISTORY" # Alternative to: "APPEND_HISTORY", "INC_APPEND_HISTORY",
# Disable ^S and ^Z for less accidental freezing.
"FLOW_CONTROL"
# Save timestamp and duration of each command in command history.
"EXTENDED_HISTORY"
];
shellAliases = {
# Navigation
rm = "rm -iv";
ls = "eza -lg";
tree = "eza -lgT";
# git aliases
# ...
};
promptInit = ''
autoload -U promptinit
promptinit
prompt off
# Simple:
# PS1='[%n@%m:%~] %(!.#.$) '
# Colorful:
# PS1='[%F{green}%n@%m%f:%F{blue}%~%f] %(!.#.$) '
# Colorful with git branch:
function git_branch_name() {
branch=$(git symbolic-ref HEAD --short 2>/dev/null)
if [ ! -z "$branch" ]; then
echo -n " [%F{red}$branch%f]"
fi
}
# Omit username, print hostname + '$' with red when root, otherwise green:
prompt='[%(!.%F{red}.%F{green})%m%f:%F{blue}%~%f]$(git_branch_name) %(!.%F{red}#%f.$) '
# See: https://zsh.sourceforge.io/Doc/Release/Options.html#Prompting
setopt prompt_cr
setopt prompt_sp
setopt prompt_subst
export PROMPT_EOL_MARK=""
'';
interactiveShellInit = ''
# Prevent user-level "config missing" message.
touch $HOME/.zshrc
# MacOS
bindkey '^[[7~' beginning-of-line
bindkey '^[[8~' end-of-line
# Linux
bindkey '^[[1;3D' beginning-of-line # alt+left
bindkey '^[[1;3C' end-of-line # alt+right
bindkey '^[[1;5D' backward-word # ctrl+left
bindkey '^[[1;5C' forward-word # ctrl+right
# Both
bindkey '^R' history-incremental-search-backward
bindkey '^U' kill-whole-line
bindkey '^Y' yank
# My SSH endpoints don't recognize modern terminals
export TERM=xterm-256color
# ^R only
eval "$(atuin init zsh --disable-up-arrow)"
'';
};
}colordrops
Or if using home manager:
programs.atuin = {
enable = true;
enableZshIntegration = true;
};stevekemp
Did you really need to share 108 lines of code, inline, rather than a link to gist/similar?
The chances of people reading this discussion running NixOS are small, and of those I'm sure the ones who were interested could search the internet for examples.
dogman123
Curious on this: "Atuin's sync keeps my history on all of them"
I just checked on their GitHub and it says "Additionally, it provides optional and fully encrypted synchronisation of your history between machines, via an Atuin server."
So you trust all of your shell commands to be stored on a server that you don't control?
Maybe I'm missing something here.
ellieh
Sync is optional*, end to end encrypted, and you can self host the server so you don't really need to trust anything if you don't want to
*: nothing syncs if you don't register, and you can even compile a version with the sync code flagged out if you REALLY don't want to trust anything
dogman123
Got it, thx!
atkailash
[dead]
northisup
I love fzf but no need to invent the wheel here if you are using zsh. check out one of these zle plugins. (Demo https://asciinema.org/a/155704)
I prefer these two, you get good performance, search that is semi-shell syntax aware, ranking that takes age somewhat into account, and syntax hilighting.
https://github.com/zdharma-continuum/history-search-multi-wo... with https://github.com/zdharma-continuum/fast-syntax-highlightin...
or the same thing but older, for those who like older things because they have an air of stability about them: https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-history-substring-search
soraminazuki
They're all external plugins, meaning that they're "inventing the wheel" as much as FZF is.
lloeki
Also one of fzf major yet non obvious feature is that you can use fzf in many places, which means that the fuzzy search algorithm and behaviour is exactly the same whether I search for shell history or project files in vim or commit messages or...
There's nothing more annoying than having two fuzzy search implementations that behave mostly the same except in this or that case which subtly breaks your implicit mental model of it.
Consistency is underrated.
EasyMark
Right, and fzf is usable across all major shells, which is a big plus. For example I use zsh at home, but at work I'm forced to use bash for everything, but it works there just the same. Plus you can bend it to other purposes than just a fancy history lookup
wetpaws
fzf also has a zsh plugin
devjam
I've been using McFly [1] recently, and like it a lot.
> McFly replaces your default ctrl-r shell history search with an intelligent search engine that takes into account your working directory and the context of recently executed commands. McFly's suggestions are prioritized in real time with a small neural network.
kristopolous
the neural network is pretty broken. It prioritizes things that I did weeks ago over a command that I just ran 20 times. Be a bit critical of it, I actually found it fairly terrible.
I know it's open source and people working on it might be reading this so let me apologize to you personally and please don't take this message as discouragement. I know how demotivating one bad review can be. It just wasn't working for me.
eigenvalue
I used to use McFly too, but atuin is much better. Worth trying, takes one minute to install it.
noname120
Which features from Atuin are missing from/inferior in McFly?
fernandotakai
for me, atuin's history sync is a huge must since i use 5 different machines across my house.
v3ss0n
atuin is much better in what? McFly is a lot more light weight and does semantic search using a neural network and do not need a database.
fsckboy
this sort of topic illustrates the type of vexing problems that I wish a community model was better at addressing. Chasing and solving your own pain points is cool but frequently creates new pain points for other people. I love more features for searching history, but...
the reason bash uses Ctrl-r for searching back in history is because that's EMACS for searching back in your edit buffer (like C-a, C-f, C-b, C-e, etc are emacs cursor motions). I like the features of fzf, but I hate that it suddenly changes muscle memory that I rely on that is bigger than the immediate context.
these kinds of problems show up all over. I have always relied heavily on "middle button pastes the current mouse selection". I don't know what's going on in linux--is it Wayland?--but that feature is increasingly and increasingly being broken in more and more places. one place (which may entail a different "feature creep") is "click the url-bar in the browser and it auto-selects the whole thing...uh uh uh, wait, but not anymore for the purposes of the X-selection. but you can get the X-selection back if you click again (to deselect the whole thing) then again to reselect the whole thing... or is it double click..." the mind boggles
the old way (or goal) was to have the UI be standard, everywhere used the same code. but there were always people who wanted to innovate on their own, then with the idea of UX it wasn't any longer about standardization--or ironically personalization--at all
I realize whoever are making these changes simply don't work the way I have (for the last 35 yrs (well, that's just with linux)) so they don't notice what's being thrown away. I guess it's getting close to that time I should climb on and drift away on a little ice raft...
fergie
100% agree. FWIW I use ctrl-r all day every day in emacs and also in the shell and its... fine.
In my opinion, the one thing that would make a difference is a longer and broader history.
danwills
It is possible to change the history length in most shells including bash, when I googled it I found this baeldung.com article which says it can be set to unlimited using this (or use a big number if you'd prefer!):
export HISTSIZE=-1; export HISTFILESIZE=-1
Also, one can bind the 'up' key to do the search action too, which I think is pretty convenient, my bindings are for zsh but I think it should also work in bash:
bindkey '^[[5~' up-line-or-history
bindkey '^[[6~' down-line-or-history
jvan
Changes that some applications made for Wayland definitely broke pasting for me. It seems Wayland added a separate clipboard so going between apps was a crapshoot if pasting would work. I haven't found a solution that covers everything at once.
Hobadee
I use zsh-histdb, and it's amazing. It shows return statuses and which directory the command was run from.
I honestly can't remember the entire setup, but my dotfiles that have the setup are here: https://github.com/Hobadee/dotfiles/blob/master/Common/profi...
commandersaki
I've been using Eli Bandersky Persistent History in Bash since more than 10+ years ago [1]. It's definitely given the biggest productivity boost when using the shell. There's definitely newer solutions, but as the old adage goes if it aint broke don't fix it (and for the same reason I use bash because I know most of the quirks). The only addition is adding the fzf reverse history search for my current session.
[1]: https://eli.thegreenplace.net/2013/06/11/keeping-persistent-...
3r7j6qzi9jvnve
> I’m also not sure the ‘fuzzy’ aspects of Atuin quite match the heights of fzf/skim).
This. I've been using atuin for a few months and this is so horrible how much better it could be with a "real" fzf matching... I just tried skim shell integration ( https://github.com/skim-rs/skim/tree/master/shell ) and it's great. I kind of like the extra metadata atuin saves (cwd, session context), but I think I was just waiting to stumble into this to turn atuin back off...
pridkett
You can have the best of both worlds - use atuin and fzf.
I use fish shell, so you'll have to forgive any fishisms.
First, when you start atuin, don't bind to ctrl-r, instead manually bind it to something else. I use ctrl-t. This brings up the "standard" atuin interface which you can use to get the more detailed history - in particular the command inspector can be super helpful as is the ability to limit scope of history searches.
Next, bind ctrl-r to something like this: `commandline -r (atuin history list --print0 -f "{time} | {command}" | fzf --read0 --delimiter="|" --accept-nth 2 | sed 's/^ *//')`
In fish-speak, that's saying replace the command line with a command that fzf selects from your atuin history (which has been pretty printed to show the time of the command, but that won't end up on the command line).
Probably 95% of the time I'm using my new ctrl-r which searches atuin history using fzf. The other 5% of the time I'm looking for a command that I know I've ran in a particular directory, or using the atuin history to remove problematic entries from my history.
evgpbfhnr
I've considered this, but I'm running on a potato, and fetching the whole atuin history seems to take a while:
$ time atuin history list --print0 -f "{time} | {command}" > /dev/null
real 0m1.849s
Anyway, thanks - I'll fiddle with all this :)
DavideNL
...i just use both atuin and fzf.fish [1] and bind them both to another key.
null
0fflineuser
Personnally I use bash, so I made so my history is eternal (as is the content never get deleted) and I use FZF_CTRL_R_OPTS to customize the ctrl-r of fzf.
Also the history is reloaded after each command so if I type multiple commands in a tmux pane x, and then go to another tmux pane y I just have to type something (just press the enter key) in pane y and I have the full history of what happened in pane x.
Here is how to do it, just add the following to your .bashrc for the eternal history :
```
export HISTFILESIZE=
export HISTSIZE=
export HISTTIMEFORMAT="[%F %T] "
export HISTFILE=~/.bash_eternal_history
export HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth
shopt -s histappend
shopt -s checkwinsize
filtered_history_save() {
local last_command=$(history 1 | awk '{print $4}')
# Don't store some commands in the history.
if [[ ! "$last_command" =~ (mpv|pass|yt-dlp|wtwitch) ]]; then
history -a
fi
history -c
history -r
}
export PROMPT_COMMAND="filtered_history_save; $PROMPT_COMMAND"
# Sources :
# http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9457233/unlimited-bash-history
# http://superuser.com/questions/575479/bash-history-truncated-to-500-lines-on-each-login
# http://superuser.com/questions/20900/bash-history-loss
And for the custom fzf ctrl-r :
```
# Source fzf (should already be here if fzf is installed)
if [ -f /usr/share/fzf/completion.bash ]; then
. /usr/share/fzf/completion.bash
fi
if [ -f /usr/share/fzf/key-bindings.bash ]; then
. /usr/share/fzf/key-bindings.bash
fi
# Customize ctrl-r
export FZF_CTRL_R_OPTS="
--preview 'echo {2..} | bat --color=always -pl sh'
--preview-window right:wrap
--bind 'ctrl-/:toggle-preview'
--bind 'ctrl-t:track+clear-query'
--bind 'ctrl-y:execute-silent(echo -n {2..} | pbcopy)+abort'
--color header:italic
--header 'Press CTRL-Y to copy command into clipboard'"
joshka
> The network aspects of Atuin also gave me the heebie-jeebies. Reasonable people can differ on such matters.
The networking stuff can be fully compiled out of Atuin. The client and sync feature flags[1] control this, and it's fairly trivial to confirm that the networking crate (reqwest) is only enabled when the sync feature is enabled.[2]
Atuin can also be configured to only talk to your own sync server rather than the Atuin run server, and the history is e2e encrypted, so :shrug:. There's enough good engineering there that I'd not put it as particularly high on my list of security risks.
[1]: https://github.com/atuinsh/atuin/blob/e8df3d168e7fb9d6f99d97...
[2]: https://github.com/atuinsh/atuin/blob/e8df3d168e7fb9d6f99d97...
thiht
If you install atuin to give it a try, be careful to backup your history first. I installed it once and it deleted all my zsh history for some reason. I've rarely been more aware of how much I rely on my history to get things done.
Also it made atuin useless to me since I didn't have a history anymore so couldn't even try it properly.
orkj
Seems like general good advice, but for me it was simply a matter of `atuin import auto`. The initial response was similar (as in, here is no history, where is my history, this is useless). Then I read this page where it said to import, which seemed relevant:
Not sure if that was the missing case for you, but just in case someone reads this and gets the same feeling as me
yjftsjthsd-h
> and I’ve come across more than one paid professional who doesn’t use the “up” key to retrieve the previous command.
Well. I prefer ctrl-p personally, but I take your point:)
brigandish
I'm a `!!` man.
curun1r
Especially since it fits nicely into a mental model that includes !*, !^, !$, !-2 and such. ^something^somethingelse is also useful.
And the sudo !! pattern is something I do even when I realize that I need root ahead of time. There’s something about hitting enter on a command that makes me realize I’ve made a mistake, so doing that before I’ve granted root permissions is helpful. Up/ctrl-p are more awkward to use this way.
brigandish
I also like typing `!:` (in zsh) and hitting tab and getting some helpful hints:
$ !:
& -- repeat substitution
A -- as ':a', then resolve symlinks
P -- realpath, resolve '..' physically
Q -- strip quotes
a -- absolute path, resolve '..' lexically
c -- PATH search for command
e -- leave only extension
g -- globally apply s or &
h -- head - strip trailing path element
l -- lower case all words
p -- print without executing
q -- quote to escape further substitutions
r -- root - strip suffix
s -- substitute string
t -- tail - strip directories
u -- upper case all words
x -- quote words, breaking on whitespacefiddlerwoaroof
I do <Esc>k
TacticalCoder
[dead]
philocalyst
A fish version: https://gist.github.com/philocalyst/b2d764d694e63bc4c5143735...
It goes from the latest command down by default which isn't exactly the desired behavior but hesitated to add any other commands! I'm sure there is an option to reverse the order for a cli I'm already using but I couldn't find it in a cursory search :(
Feedback/commits appreciated.
DavideNL
Fyi; I assume you already checked out fzf.fish ?
philocalyst
Actually I did not! That's so great then -- maybe I'll just fork it and add skim support :)
Thanks
I use Atuin, but unlike the author actually find it more valuable since I use it across many machines. I have 7 different machines (of various make and OS though all *NIX) in my house right now that I regularly SSH in to or use directly, and Atuin's sync keeps my history on all of them. If I want to narrow down by host I can still do that. I also keep similar directory structures so I can narrow down by directory even if I performed a command on a different machine most of the time.
That said, some form of advanced history search is a game changer, no matter how you get it. It's one of those "can't understand how I lived without it" things once you get it going.