zsh-autosuggestions

Fish-like fast/unobtrusive autosuggestions for zsh.

It suggests commands as you type.

Requirements: Zsh v4.3.11 or later

Installation

See INSTALL.md.

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. Default values of these variables can be found here.

Note: If you are using Oh My Zsh, you can put this configuration in a file in the $ZSH_CUSTOM directory. See their comments on overriding internals.

Suggestion Highlight Style

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

Suggestion Strategy

ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_STRATEGY is an array that specifies how suggestions should be generated. The strategies in the array are tried successively until a suggestion is found. There are currently three built-in strategies to choose from:

• history: Chooses the most recent match from history.
• match_prev_cmd: Like history, but chooses the most recent match whose preceding history item matches the most recently executed command (more info). Note that this strategy won't work as expected with ZSH options that don't preserve the history order such as HIST_IGNORE_ALL_DUPS or HIST_EXPIRE_DUPS_FIRST.
• completion: (experimental) Chooses a suggestion based on what tab-completion would suggest. (requires zpty module)

For example, setting ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_STRATEGY=(history completion) will first try to find a suggestion from your history, but, if it can't find a match, will find a suggestion from the completion engine.

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_ACCEPT_WIDGETS: Widgets in this array will accept the suggestion when invoked.
• ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_EXECUTE_WIDGETS: Widgets in this array will execute the suggestion when invoked.
• ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_PARTIAL_ACCEPT_WIDGETS: Widgets in this array will partially accept the suggestion when invoked.
• ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_IGNORE_WIDGETS: Widgets in this array will not trigger any custom behavior.

Widgets that modify the buffer and are not found in any of these arrays will fetch a new suggestion after they are invoked.

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

Disabling suggestion for large buffers

Set ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_BUFFER_MAX_SIZE to an integer value to disable autosuggestion for large buffers. The default is unset, which means that autosuggestion will be tried for any buffer size. Recommended value is 20. This can be useful when pasting large amount of text in the terminal, to avoid triggering autosuggestion for too long strings.

Enable Asynchronous Mode

As of v0.4.0, suggestions can be fetched asynchronously. To enable this behavior, set the ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_USE_ASYNC variable (it can be set to anything).

Key Bindings

This plugin provides a few widgets that you can use with bindkey:

1. autosuggest-accept: Accepts the current suggestion.
2. autosuggest-execute: Accepts and executes the current suggestion.
3. autosuggest-clear: Clears the current suggestion.
4. autosuggest-fetch: Fetches a suggestion (works even when suggestions are disabled).
5. autosuggest-disable: Disables suggestions.
6. autosuggest-enable: Re-enables suggestions.
7. autosuggest-toggle: Toggles between enabled/disabled suggestions.

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

bindkey '^ ' autosuggest-accept

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. See this comment for a good example of what this means.
• 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 zsh-autosuggestions.zsh from those source files.

Pull Requests

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

• Request to merge into the develop branch (NOT master)
• 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

Tests are written in ruby using the rspec framework. They use tmux to drive a pseudoterminal, sending simulated keystrokes and making assertions on the terminal content.

Test files live in spec/. To run the tests, run make test. To run a specific test, run TESTS=spec/some_spec.rb make test. You can also specify a zsh binary to use by setting the TEST_ZSH_BIN environment variable (ex: TEST_ZSH_BIN=/bin/zsh make test).

License

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