0.58.0 #

(January 2025)

Happy new year!

fzf 0.58.0 is a big release with many new features and improvements.

Highlights #

• Style presets
  • fzf now offers three “style presets” for quick customization. You can activate a preset using the --style=[default|minimal|full[:BORDER_STYLE] option.

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• More borders
  • Three new border types, --list-border, --input-border, and --header-border are added, offering much greater flexibility for customizing the user interface.

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• --gap improvements
  • fzf now renders a dashed line (┈┈) in each --gap for better visual separation and a more streamlined look.

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• --nth improvements
  • With the new change-nth action, you can dynamically change the search scope. Also, fzf now allows you to display the “nth” parts in a different style as shown below.

  • 

Style presets #

fzf --style full #

• All inner borders (--list-border --input-border --header-border)
• --info inline-right
• --highlight-line

fzf --style full \
    --preview 'fzf-preview.sh {}' --bind 'focus:transform-header:file --brief {}'

fzf --style full:double \
    --preview 'fzf-preview.sh {}' --bind 'focus:transform-header:file --brief {}'

fzf --style default #

The usual.

fzf --style default \
    --preview 'fzf-preview.sh {}' --bind 'focus:transform-header:file --brief {}'

fzf --style minimal #

• No gutter (--color gutter:-1)
• No separator (--no-separator)
• No scrollbars (--no-scrollbar)
• No scroll indicator in the preview window (--preview-window noinfo)
• Minimal preview border (--preview-border line)
  • line is a new border style that draws a single line between the preview window and the list section regardless of the position of the preview window.

fzf --style minimal \
    --preview 'fzf-preview.sh {}' --bind 'focus:transform-header:file --brief {}'

More borders #

1. Border for the list section #

You can now configure fzf to draw border around the list section of the interface with --list-border. Just like the other types of borders, you can place a label on it with --list-label and customize the position of it with --list-label-pos.

git ls-files | fzf \
    --preview 'fzf-preview.sh {}' \
    --list-border --list-label ' Result ' --preview-label ' Preview '

You can dynamically change the label using either change-list-label or transform-list-label action, and configure the colors in the list section separately with list-fg, list-bg, list-border, and list-label.

git ls-files | fzf \
    --preview 'fzf-preview.sh {}' \
    --list-border \
    --bind 'result:transform-list-label:
        if [[ -z $FZF_QUERY ]]; then
          echo " $FZF_MATCH_COUNT items "
        else
          echo " $FZF_MATCH_COUNT matches for [$FZF_QUERY] "
        fi
        ' \
    --bind 'focus:transform-preview-label:[[ -n {} ]] && printf " Previewing [%s] " {}' \
    --bind 'ctrl-r:change-list-label( Reloading the list )+reload(sleep 2; git ls-files)' \
    --color 'list-border:#669966,list-label:#99cc99,preview-border:#9999cc,preview-label:#ccccff' \
    --border --border-label ' Demo ' --padding 1,2

Here’s another example with thinblock border style and different background colors.

git ls-files | fzf \
    --preview 'fzf-preview.sh {}' \
    --list-border thinblock --preview-border thinblock \
    --list-label-pos bottom --preview-label-pos bottom \
    --bind 'result:transform-list-label:
        if [[ -z $FZF_QUERY ]]; then
          echo " $FZF_MATCH_COUNT items "
        else
          echo " $FZF_MATCH_COUNT matches for [$FZF_QUERY] "
        fi
        ' \
    --bind 'focus:transform-preview-label:[[ -n {} ]] && printf " Previewing [%s] " {}' \
    --bind 'ctrl-r:change-list-label( Reloading the list )+reload(sleep 2; git ls-files)' \
    --color 'bg:#222222,border:#333333,list-bg:#334433,preview-bg:#333344,list-border:#669966,list-label:#99cc99,preview-border:#9999cc,preview-label:#ccccff' \
    --border thinblock --border-label ' Demo ' --border-label-pos bottom --padding 1,2

2. Border for the input section #

On top of that, you can now even configure fzf to draw border around the input section (including the prompt line where you type in the query, and the info line where the counters are displayed) with --input-border and put a label on it with --input-label.

git ls-files | fzf \
    --preview 'fzf-preview.sh {}' \
    --input-border --input-label ' Input ' --preview-label ' Preview '

You might want to experiment it with a different --info option such as inline-right to save space.

git ls-files | fzf \
    --preview 'fzf-preview.sh {}' \
    --input-border --input-label ' Input ' --preview-label ' Preview ' \
    --info inline-right

3. Border for the header section #

Finally, you can configure fzf to display border around the header section

git ls-files | fzf \
    --preview 'fzf-preview.sh {}' \
    --preview-label ' Preview ' \
    --bind 'focus:transform-header:file --brief {} || echo "No file selected"' \
    --header-border --header-label ' File Type '

--header-first works just as expected as before.

git ls-files | fzf \
    --preview 'fzf-preview.sh {}' \
    --preview-label ' Preview ' \
    --bind 'focus:transform-header:file --brief {} || echo "No file selected"' \
    --header-border --header-label ' File Type ' --header-first

Fun with borders #

So now we have 5 types of borders that are fully customizable.

Now let’s put them all together. We can start from --style full.

git ls-files | fzf --style full \
    --border --padding 1,2 \
    --border-label ' Demo ' --input-label ' Input ' --header-label ' File Type ' \
    --preview 'fzf-preview.sh {}' \
    --bind 'result:transform-list-label:
        if [[ -z $FZF_QUERY ]]; then
          echo " $FZF_MATCH_COUNT items "
        else
          echo " $FZF_MATCH_COUNT matches for [$FZF_QUERY] "
        fi
        ' \
    --bind 'focus:transform-preview-label:[[ -n {} ]] && printf " Previewing [%s] " {}' \
    --bind 'focus:+transform-header:file --brief {} || echo "No file selected"' \
    --bind 'ctrl-r:change-list-label( Reloading the list )+reload(sleep 2; git ls-files)' \
    --color 'border:#aaaaaa,label:#cccccc' \
    --color 'preview-border:#9999cc,preview-label:#ccccff' \
    --color 'list-border:#669966,list-label:#99cc99' \
    --color 'input-border:#996666,input-label:#ffcccc' \
    --color 'header-border:#6699cc,header-label:#99ccff'

And here’s a variation of it using thinblock border style and different background colors.

git ls-files | fzf --style full:thinblock \
    --border --padding 1,2 \
    --border-label ' Demo ' --input-label ' Input ' --header-label ' File Type ' \
    --border-label-pos bottom --input-label-pos bottom --list-label-pos bottom \
    --preview-label-pos bottom --header-label-pos bottom \
    --preview 'fzf-preview.sh {}' \
    --bind 'result:transform-list-label:
        if [[ -z $FZF_QUERY ]]; then
          echo " $FZF_MATCH_COUNT items "
        else
          echo " $FZF_MATCH_COUNT matches for [$FZF_QUERY] "
        fi
        ' \
    --bind 'focus:transform-preview-label:[[ -n {} ]] && printf " Previewing [%s] " {}' \
    --bind 'focus:+transform-header:file --brief {} || echo "No file selected"' \
    --bind 'ctrl-r:change-list-label( Reloading the list )+reload(sleep 2; git ls-files)' \
    --color 'bg:#222222,border:#aaaaaa,label:#cccccc' \
    --color 'preview-bg:#333344,preview-border:#9999cc,preview-label:#ccccff' \
    --color 'list-bg:#334433,list-border:#669966,list-label:#99cc99' \
    --color 'input-bg:#443333,input-border:#996666,input-label:#ffcccc' \
    --color 'current-bg:#223322,selected-bg:#2a3b2a' \
    --color 'header-bg:#334455,header-border:#999999,header-label:#aabbcc' \
    --multi

--gap improvements #

As you may already know, fzf can process and display multi-line items, but sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between consecutive items.

To address this issue, --gap option was added in 0.56.0 to display blank lines between items and provide a better visual separation between items. However, it didn’t look quite nice with single-line items.

In this release, fzf improves the visual of it by rendering a dashed line (┈┈) in each gap.

It looks much better with both single-line and multi-line items.

--gap-line #

You can customize the gap line with --gap-line option which takes an arbitrary string.

fzf --gap --gap-line ═

And you can even use ANSI color codes, because, why not?

fzf --gap --gap-line "$(lolcat -f -F 1.4 <<< ╴╴╴╴╴╴╴╴╴╴╴╴╴╴)"

--nth improvements #

change-nth #

--nth option allows you to limit the search scope to specific parts of each line. In this release, fzf introduces a new action change-nth which allows you to dynamically change the search scope.

# Press 'space' to change the scope from 1st to 2nd to 3rd, and back to 1st
echo 'foo foobar foobarbaz' | fzf --bind 'space:change-nth(2|3|)' --nth 1 -q foo

nth style #

When using --nth, it can be unclear which parts of the lines are being searched. Even more so if we use the new change-nth action and change the option dynamically.

Displaying the “nth” parts differently greatly helps in understanding the search scope. --color nth:STYLE option is added for this purpose.

# Italic
ls -al | fzf --nth -1 --color nth:italic

# Reverse
ls -al | fzf --nth -1 --color nth:reverse

# Reverse and bold
ls -al | fzf --nth -1 --color nth:reverse:bold

# Dim the other parts
# * fg:dim dims the text
# * nth:regular resets the style (dim)
ls -al | fzf --nth -1 --color fg:dim,nth:regular

FZF_NTH environment variable #

The current “nth” value will be exported as an environment variable named $FZF_NTH. The following examples demonstrate how you can use it in your scripts.

# CTRL-N to toggle name-only search
fzf --delimiter / \
    --color nth:regular,fg:dim \
    --bind 'ctrl-n:change-nth(-1|)' \
    --bind 'result:transform-prompt:
              [[ $FZF_NTH = -1 ]] && echo "name> " || echo "path> "'

ps -ef | fzf --reverse --header-lines 1 --header-border bottom --input-border \
         --color nth:regular,fg:dim \
         --bind 'ctrl-n:change-nth(8..|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|)' \
         --bind 'result:transform-prompt:echo "${FZF_NTH}> "'