zsh-autocomplete adds real-time type-ahead autocompletion to Zsh. Find as you type, then press Tab to insert the top completion, Shift+Tab to insert the bottom one, or ↓/PgDn to select another completion.

• Other Features
• Key Bindings
• Requirements
• Installation
• Settings
• Author
• License

Besides live autocompletion, zsh-autocomplete comes with many more useful completion features.

Zsh's completion system is powerful, but hard to configure. So, zsh-autocomplete does it for you, while providing a manageable list of settings for changing the defaults.

Press Ctrl+R or Ctrl+S to do an interactive, multi-line, fuzzy history search.

Press ↑ or PgUp to browse the last 16 history items. If the command line is not empty, then it will instead list the 16 most recent fuzzy matches.

Press Ctrl+Space in the completion menu or the history menu to insert more than one item.

Works out of the box with zero configuration, but also supports zsh-z, zoxide, z.lua, rupa/z.sh, autojump and fasd.

Press Shift+Tab to insert:

Recommended:

• Zsh 5.8 or later.

Minimum:

• Zsh 5.3 or later.

1. git clone this repo.
2. Add to your ~/.zshrc file, before any calls to compdef:

   source path/to/zsh-autocomplete.plugin.zsh

3. Remove any calls to compinit from your ~/.zshrc file.

1. cd into zsh-autocomplete's directory.
2. Do git pull.

zsh-autocomplete should work as a plugin with most frameworks & plugin managers. Please refer to your framework's/plugin manager's documentation for instructions.

To change your settings, just copy-paste any of the code below to your ~/.zshrc file.

⚠️ Note that while most of these settings use the :autocomplete: namespace, some of them use :completion:. This is because the latter are managed by Zsh's own completion system, whereas the former are unique to zsh-autocomplete.

• Change Tab behavior
• Change other key bindings
• Start autocompletion in history search mode
• Wait for a minimum amount of time
• Wait for a minimum amount of input
• Ignore certain inputs
• Disable certain completions
• Change the order of completions
• Show more/less help text
• Change the "Partial list" message
• Use your own completion config

By default, Tab insert the top completion, Shift+Tab inserts the bottom completion, and ↓ activates menu selection.

To make Tab first insert any common substring, before inserting full completions:

zstyle ':autocomplete:tab:*' insert-unambiguous yes

To make Tab or Shift+Tab activate menu selection:

zstyle ':autocomplete:tab:*' widget-style menu-select

To make Tab and Shift+Tab cycle completions without using menu selection:

zstyle ':autocomplete:tab:*' widget-style menu-complete

To make Tab try Fzf's completion before using Zsh's:

zstyle ':autocomplete:tab:*' fzf-completion yes

⚠️ Note that, unlike most other settings, changing widget-style at runtime has no effect and changing fzf-completion at runtime will not function correctly. These settings can be changed in your ~/.zshrc file only.

widget-style, insert-unambiguous and fzf are mutually compatible and can be used in parallel.

Key bindings other than Tab or Shift+Tab can be overridden with the bindkey command, if you do so after sourcing zsh-autocomplete. To make this easier, zsh-autocomplete defines an associative array $key that you can use:

source path/to/zsh-autocomplete.plugin.zsh
# The following lines revert the given keys back to Zsh defaults:
bindkey $key[Up] up-line-or-history
bindkey $key[Down] down-line-or-history
bindkey $key[ControlSpace] set-mark-command
bindkey -M menuselect $key[Return] accept-line

To start each new command line as if Ctrl+R has been pressed:

zstyle ':autocomplete:*' default-context history-incremental-search-backward

To suppress autocompletion until you have stopped typing for a certain number of seconds:

zstyle ':autocomplete:*' min-delay .3  # 300 milliseconds

To suppress autocompletion until a minimum number of characters have been typed:

zstyle ':autocomplete:*' min-input 3

To not trigger autocompletion for input that matches a pattern:

# This example matches any input word consisting of two or more dots (and no other chars).
zstyle ':autocomplete:*' ignored-input '..##'

The pattern syntax supported here is that of Zsh's extended glob operators.

To disable, for example, ancestor directories, recent directories and recent files:

zstyle ':completion:*:complete:*:' tag-order \
  '! ancestor-directories recent-directories recent-files' -

⚠️ Note the additional : at the end of the namespace selector and the - as the last value.

To list certain completions in a particular order before all other completions:

zstyle ':completion:*:complete:*:' group-order \
  options arguments values local-directories files builtins history-words

⚠️ Note the additional : at the end of the namespace selector.

To show auto-generated command descriptions:

zstyle ':completion:*' extra-verbose yes

To show command descriptions only when you press Ctrl+Space:

zstyle ':completion:list-expand:*' extra-verbose yes

To hide all descriptions:

zstyle ':completion:*' verbose no

To alter the message shown when the list of completions does not fit on screen:

  local hint=$'%{\e[02;39m%}' kbd=$'%{\e[22;39m%}' end=$'%{\e[0m%}'
  zstyle ':autocomplete:*:too-many-matches' message \
    "${hint}(partial list; press ${kbd}Ctrl${hint}+${kbd}Space$hint to expand)$end"

To disable zsh-autocomplete's pre-packaged completion config completely:

zstyle ':autocomplete:*' config off

© 2020 Marlon Richert

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.