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fzf is a general-purpose command-line fuzzy finder.

It's an interactive filter program for any kind of list; files, command
history, processes, hostnames, bookmarks, git commits, etc. It implements
a "fuzzy" matching algorithm, so you can quickly type in patterns with omitted
characters and still get the results you want.

Highlights

📦 Portable — Distributed as a single binary for easy installation
⚡ Blazingly fast — Highly optimized code instantly processes millions of items
🛠️ Extremely versatile — Fully customizable via an event-action binding mechanism
🔋 Batteries included — Includes integration with bash, zsh, fish, Vim, and Neovim

Sponsors ❤️

I would like to thank all the sponsors of this project who make it possible for me to continue to improve fzf.

If you'd like to sponsor this project, please visit https://github.com/sponsors/junegunn.

Installation

Using Homebrew

You can use Homebrew (on macOS or Linux) to install fzf.

brew install fzf

[!IMPORTANT]
To set up shell integration (key bindings and fuzzy completion),
see the instructions below.

fzf is also available via MacPorts: sudo port install fzf

Linux packages

[!IMPORTANT]
To set up shell integration (key bindings and fuzzy completion),
see the instructions below.

Windows packages

On Windows, fzf is available via Chocolatey, Scoop,
Winget, and MSYS2:

Using git

Alternatively, you can "git clone" this repository to any directory and run
install script.

The install script will add lines to your shell configuration file to modify
$PATH and set up shell integration.

Binary releases

You can download the official fzf binaries from the releases page.

https://github.com/junegunn/fzf/releases

Setting up shell integration

Add the following line to your shell configuration file.

bash
zsh
fish

[!NOTE]
--bash, --zsh, and --fish options are only available in fzf 0.48.0 or
later. If you have an older version of fzf, or want finer control, you can
source individual script files in the /shell directory. The
location of the files may vary depending on the package manager you use.
Please refer to the package documentation for more information.
(e.g. apt show fzf)

[!TIP]
You can disable CTRL-T or ALT-C binding by setting FZF_CTRL_T_COMMAND or
FZF_ALT_C_COMMAND to an empty string when sourcing the script.
For example, to disable ALT-C binding:

bash: FZF_ALT_C_COMMAND= eval "$(fzf --bash)"

zsh: FZF_ALT_C_COMMAND= source <(fzf --zsh)

fish: fzf --fish | FZF_ALT_C_COMMAND= source

Setting the variables after sourcing the script will have no effect.

Vim/Neovim plugin

If you use vim-plug, add this to
your Vim configuration file:

junegunn/fzf provides the basic library functions
- fzf#install() makes sure that you have the latest binary
junegunn/fzf.vim is a separate project
that provides a variety of useful commands

To learn more about the Vim integration, see README-VIM.md.

[!TIP]
If you use Neovim and prefer Lua-based plugins, check out
fzf-lua.

Upgrading fzf

fzf is being actively developed, and you might want to upgrade it once in a
while. Please follow the instruction below depending on the installation
method used.

git: cd ~/.fzf && git pull && ./install
brew: brew update; brew upgrade fzf
macports: sudo port upgrade fzf
chocolatey: choco upgrade fzf
vim-plug: :PlugUpdate fzf

Building fzf

See BUILD.md.

Usage

fzf will launch interactive finder, read the list from STDIN, and write the
selected item to STDOUT.

Without STDIN pipe, fzf will traverse the file system under the current
directory to get the list of files.

[!NOTE]
You can override the default behavior

Either by setting $FZF_DEFAULT_COMMAND to a command that generates the desired list

Or by setting --walker, --walker-root, and --walker-skip options in $FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS

[!WARNING]
A more robust solution would be to use xargs but we've presented
the above as it's easier to grasp
fzf --print0 | xargs -0 -o vim

[!TIP]
fzf also has the ability to turn itself into a different process.
fzf --bind 'enter:become(vim {})'
See Turning into a different process
for more information.

Using the finder

CTRL-K / CTRL-J (or CTRL-P / CTRL-N) to move cursor up and down
Enter key to select the item, CTRL-C / CTRL-G / ESC to exit
On multi-select mode (-m), TAB and Shift-TAB to mark multiple items
Emacs style key bindings
Mouse: scroll, click, double-click; shift-click and shift-scroll on
multi-select mode

Display modes

fzf by default runs in fullscreen mode, but there are other display modes.

`--height` mode

With --height HEIGHT[%], fzf will start below the cursor with the given height.

reverse layout and --border goes well with this option.

By prepending ~ to the height, you're setting the maximum height.

Height value can be a negative number.

`--tmux` mode

With --tmux option, fzf will start in a tmux popup.

--tmux is silently ignored when you're not on tmux.

[!NOTE]
If you're stuck with an old version of tmux that doesn't support popup,
or if you want to open fzf in a regular tmux pane, check out
fzf-tmux script.

[!TIP]
You can add these options to $FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS so that they're applied by
default. For example,
# Open in tmux popup if on tmux, otherwise use --height mode
export FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS='--height 40% --tmux bottom,40% --layout reverse --border top'

Search syntax

Unless otherwise specified, fzf starts in "extended-search mode" where you can
type in multiple search terms delimited by spaces. e.g. ^music .mp3$ sbtrkt !fire

If you don't prefer fuzzy matching and do not wish to "quote" every word,
start fzf with -e or --exact option. Note that when --exact is set,
'-prefix "unquotes" the term.

A single bar character term acts as an OR operator. For example, the following
query matches entries that start with core and end with either go, rb,
or py.

^core go$ | rb$ | py$

Environment variables

FZF_DEFAULT_COMMAND
- Default command to use when input is tty
- e.g. export FZF_DEFAULT_COMMAND='fd --type f'
FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS
- Default options
- e.g. export FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS="--layout=reverse --inline-info"
FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS_FILE
- If you prefer to manage default options in a file, set this variable to
  point to the location of the file
- e.g. export FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS_FILE=~/.fzfrc

[!WARNING]
FZF_DEFAULT_COMMAND is not used by shell integration due to the
slight difference in requirements.

CTRL-T runs $FZF_CTRL_T_COMMAND to get a list of files and directories

ALT-C runs $FZF_ALT_C_COMMAND to get a list of directories

vim ~/** runs fzf_compgen_path() with the prefix (~/) as the first argument

cd foo** runs fzf_compgen_dir() with the prefix (foo) as the first argument

The available options are described later in this document.

Options

See the man page (man fzf) for the full list of options.

Demo

If you learn by watching videos, check out this screencast by @samoshkin to explore fzf features.

Examples

Wiki page of examples
- Disclaimer: The examples on this page are maintained by the community
  and are not thoroughly tested
Advanced fzf examples

Key bindings for command-line

By setting up shell integration, you can use
the following key bindings in bash, zsh, and fish.

CTRL-T - Paste the selected files and directories onto the command-line
- The list is generated using --walker file,dir,follow,hidden option
  - You can override the behavior by setting FZF_CTRL_T_COMMAND to a custom command that generates the desired list
  - Or you can set --walker* options in FZF_CTRL_T_OPTS
- Set FZF_CTRL_T_OPTS to pass additional options to fzf
- Can be disabled by setting FZF_CTRL_T_COMMAND to an empty string when
  sourcing the script
CTRL-R - Paste the selected command from history onto the command-line
- If you want to see the commands in chronological order, press CTRL-R
  again which toggles sorting by relevance
- Press CTRL-/ or ALT-/ to toggle line wrapping
- Set FZF_CTRL_R_OPTS to pass additional options to fzf
ALT-C - cd into the selected directory
- The list is generated using --walker dir,follow,hidden option
- Set FZF_ALT_C_COMMAND to override the default command
  - Or you can set --walker-* options in FZF_ALT_C_OPTS
- Set FZF_ALT_C_OPTS to pass additional options to fzf
- Can be disabled by setting FZF_ALT_C_COMMAND to an empty string when
  sourcing the script

Display modes for these bindings can be separately configured via
FZF_{CTRL_T,CTRL_R,ALT_C}_OPTS or globally via FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS.
(e.g. FZF_CTRL_R_OPTS='--tmux bottom,60% --height 60% --border top')

More tips can be found on the wiki page.

Fuzzy completion for bash and zsh

Files and directories

Fuzzy completion for files and directories can be triggered if the word before
the cursor ends with the trigger sequence, which is by default **.

COMMAND [DIRECTORY/][FUZZY_PATTERN]**

Process IDs

Fuzzy completion for PIDs is provided for kill command.

Host names

For ssh and telnet commands, fuzzy completion for hostnames is provided. The
names are extracted from /etc/hosts and ~/.ssh/config.

Environment variables / Aliases

Settings

Supported commands

On bash, fuzzy completion is enabled only for a predefined set of commands
(complete | grep _fzf to see the list). But you can enable it for other
commands as well by using _fzf_setup_completion helper function.

Custom fuzzy completion

(Custom completion API is experimental and subject to change)

For a command named "COMMAND", define _fzf_complete_COMMAND function using
_fzf_complete helper.

The arguments before -- are the options to fzf.
After --, simply pass the original completion arguments unchanged ("$@").
Then, write a set of commands that generates the completion candidates and
feed its output to the function using process substitution (< <(...)).

zsh will automatically pick up the function using the naming convention but in
bash you have to manually associate the function with the command using the
complete command.

If you need to post-process the output from fzf, define
_fzf_complete_COMMAND_post as follows.

Vim plugin

See README-VIM.md.

Advanced topics

Performance

fzf is fast. Performance should not be a problem in most use cases. However,
you might want to be aware of the options that can affect performance.

--ansi tells fzf to extract and parse ANSI color codes in the input, and it
makes the initial scanning slower. So it's not recommended that you add it
to your $FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS.
--nth makes fzf slower because it has to tokenize each line.
--with-nth makes fzf slower as fzf has to tokenize and reassemble each
line.

Executing external programs

You can set up key bindings for starting external processes without leaving
fzf (execute, execute-silent).

See KEY BINDINGS section of the man page for details.

Turning into a different process

become(...) is similar to execute(...)/execute-silent(...) described
above, but instead of executing the command and coming back to fzf on
complete, it turns fzf into a new process for the command.

Compared to the seemingly equivalent command substitution vim "$(fzf)", this
approach has several advantages:

Vim will not open an empty file when you terminate fzf with
CTRL-C
Vim will not open an empty file when you press ENTER on an empty
result
Can handle multiple selections even when they have whitespaces

To be fair, running fzf --print0 | xargs -0 -o vim instead of vim "$(fzf)"
resolves all of the issues mentioned. Nonetheless, become(...) still offers
additional benefits in different scenarios.

You can set up multiple bindings to handle the result in different ways
without any wrapping script
- Previously, you would have to use --expect=ctrl-e and check the first
  line of the output of fzf
You can easily build the subsequent command using the field index
expressions of fzf

Reloading the candidate list

By binding reload action to a key or an event, you can make fzf dynamically
reload the candidate list. See https://github.com/junegunn/fzf/issues/1750 for
more details.

1. Update the list of processes by pressing CTRL-R

2. Switch between sources by pressing CTRL-D or CTRL-F

3. Interactive ripgrep integration

The following example uses fzf as the selector interface for ripgrep. We bound
reload action to change event, so every time you type on fzf, the ripgrep
process will restart with the updated query string denoted by the placeholder
expression {q}. Also, note that we used --disabled option so that fzf
doesn't perform any secondary filtering.

If ripgrep doesn't find any matches, it will exit with a non-zero exit status,
and fzf will warn you about it. To suppress the warning message, we added
|| true to the command, so that it always exits with 0.

See "Using fzf as interactive Ripgrep launcher"
for more sophisticated examples.

Preview window

When the --preview option is set, fzf automatically starts an external process
with the current line as the argument and shows the result in the split window.
Your $SHELL is used to execute the command with $SHELL -c COMMAND.
The window can be scrolled using the mouse or custom key bindings.

Preview window supports ANSI colors, so you can use any program that
syntax-highlights the content of a file, such as
Bat or
Highlight:

You can customize the size, position, and border of the preview window using
--preview-window option, and the foreground and background color of it with
--color option. For example,

See the man page (man fzf) for the full list of options.

More advanced examples can be found here.

[!WARNING]
Since fzf is a general-purpose text filter rather than a file finder, it is
not a good idea to add --preview option to your $FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS.
# *********************
# ** DO NOT DO THIS! **
# *********************
export FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS='--preview "bat --style=numbers --color=always --line-range :500 {}"'

# bat doesn't work with any input other than the list of files
ps -ef | fzf
seq 100 | fzf
history | fzf

Previewing an image

fzf can display images in the preview window using one of the following protocols:

See bin/fzf-preview.sh script for more information.

Tips

Respecting `.gitignore`

You can use fd,
ripgrep, or the silver
searcher to traverse the file
system while respecting .gitignore.

If you want the command to follow symbolic links and don't want it to exclude
hidden files, use the following command:

Fish shell

CTRL-T key binding of fish, unlike those of bash and zsh, will use the last
token on the command-line as the root directory for the recursive search. For
instance, hitting CTRL-T at the end of the following command-line

will list all files and directories under /var/.

When using a custom FZF_CTRL_T_COMMAND, use the unexpanded $dir variable to
make use of this feature. $dir defaults to . when the last token is not a
valid directory. Example: