Yazelix v5.2

Overview

Yazelix integrates yazi, zellij and helix, hence the name, get it?

• Zellij orchestrates everything, with yazi as a sidebar and helix as the editor
• You can open and close the sidebar by switching zellij layouts (press alt ] and alt [)
  • Or if you only got one pane open, make it fullscreen (ctrl p + f or alt f)
• Every keybinding from zellij that conflicts with helix is remapped (see them at the bottom)
• When you hit enter on a file/folder in the "sidebar" the following things happen:
  • If helix is already open, in a pane next to the sidebar, it will open that file/folder in a new buffer on that pane (magic)
  • If helix is not open, it will cd into the folder of the file (or the folder itself), and then open it in helix
  • Note: It is highly recommended that you let the shell script execute in peace, so during these milliseconds don't move around
• This project holds my config files for zellij and yazi, almost like a plugin or something
  • But it's just some config files with a bit of shell scripting!

Preview

v4.1 preview (obs: currect v5 flow is better)

v5 layout

Improvements of v5.2 over v5

• Adds a yazi plugin to make the status bar in the yazi pane look good again, unclutered, and with a cool color
• Adds ghostty config. Author also switched to ghostty as a daily driver, but plans to support both (it's just a config file). Author is happy with ghostty but wez is great as well

Compatibility

• Should work with any terminal emulator, but I the ones I use daily drive are wezterm and ghostty
• I also provide config files for them below! They call zellij with the proper arguments
• editor: helix
• to do: test with shells other than nushell
• Take a look at the versions of programs used near the end of the readme

Instructions to set it up

1. Make sure yazi, zellij, helix, and nushell are installed and in your path
2. Just clone this repo in your ~/.config dir
3. Configure WezTerm:

cp ~/.config/yazelix/terminal_configs/wez/.wezterm.lua ~/.wezterm.lua

Or Ghostty:

cp ~/.config/yazelix/terminal_configs/ghostty/config ~/.config/ghostty/config

Notes:

• Feel free to change the configs and make it yours, this is just a starting point
• For extra configuration, visit: https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/config/files.html or https://ghostty.org/docs/config
• If you use another shell, you have to configure it to run something like nu -c "zellij -l welcome --config-dir ~/.config/yazelix/zellij options --layout-dir ~/.config/yazelix/zellij/layouts" on startup
  • or zellij -l welcome --config-dir ~/.config/yazelix/zellij options --layout-dir ~/.config/yazelix/zellij/layout (but you still need nu anyways)
  • Nowadays I'm daily running Ghostty but both are great terminal emulators

4. Optional: Using zoxide enhances the yazelix experience ten-fold, let me tell ya... and it integrates with yazi

That's it, and feel free to open issues and PRs 😉

Why use this project?

• This project is relatively simple to understand, the inner workings and all. Just a bit of shell scripting magic, but mostly config files
• Easy to configure and make it yours
• I daily drive this, and will change it according to my needs, keeping it updated and improving it
• Zero conflict keybindings, very powerful sidebar (learning yazi is a process, but you can do very cool stuff)

Troubleshooting

• If it's not working, try upgrading yazi and zellij to the latest version
• Check the versions table below!

Possible Improvements

• Yazelix will only detect helix if it's adjacent to the sidebar. A minor thing.
• When you open a new tab, yazi opens as single pane taking all space
  • But it does not show the parents and preview columns, it only shows the current dir column
  • To address this I would have to reopen yazi with a different config?

Keybinding remaps

New Zellij Keybinding	Previous Keybinding	Helix Action that uses that previous key	Zellij Action remapped
Ctrl e	Ctrl o	jump_backward	SwitchToMode "Session"
Ctrl y	Ctrl s	save_selection	SwitchToMode "Scroll"
Alt w	Alt i	shrink_selection	MoveTab "Left"
Alt q	Alt o	expand_selection	MoveTab "Right"
Alt m	Alt n	select_next_sibling	NewPane
Alt 2	Ctrl b	move_page_up	SwitchToMode "Tmux"

If you find a conflict, please open an issue. Keep in mind, though, that compatibility with tmux mode is not a goal of this project.

Discoverability of keybindings

• zellij: zellij is great at this, works out of the box, you'll visually see all the keybindings in the status-bar
• helix: helix is the same honestly
• yazi: There is only one keybinding to remember: ~ This shows all keybindings and commands (press alt f to make the yazi pane fullscreen)
• nushell: you can run tutor on nushell, you can read the https://www.nushell.sh/book/, you can run help commands | find regex (if you want to learn about regex for example, but could be anything)
  • well, I do use ctrl r a lot in nushell, it opens a interactive history search

Keybindings tips

• Zellij: Type alt f to make your pane fullscreen (and back)
• Zellij: Type ctrl p then r for a split to the right
• Zellij: Type ctrl p then d for a split in the "down" direction
• Yazi: Type z to use zoxide (fuzzy find to known paths)
• Yazi: Type Z to use fzf (fuzzy find to unknown paths)
• Yazi: Type SPACE to select files
• Yazi: Type y to yank and Y to unyank (cancels the copy)
• Yazi: Type x to cut and X to uncut (cancels the cut)
• Yazi: Type a to add a file (filename.ext) or a folder (foldername/)

Tips

• You can add more swap layouts as needed, using the KDL files in layouts.
• I recommend using ghostty or wezterm as your terminal
  • they are very extensible and performant
• Special thanks to yazi's, zellij's and helix's contributors/maintainers!
• Yazi's author graciously contributed some lua code to make yazi's status bar look awesome in the small width of a sidebar
  • Thanks for that!
• If you accidentaly close the sidebar, you can get it back with env YAZI_CONFIG_HOME=~/.config/yazelix/yazi/sidebar yazi

Im lost, it's too much information

In this case, learn how to use zellij on it's own first. And then optionally yazi. And then re-read the readme.

Contributing to Yazelix

See here in contributing

Table of Versions of Yazelix V5.2 (last tested Frebuary 26th, 2025)

Component	Version
OS	Pop!_OS 24.04
DE	COSMIC
Zellij	0.41.2
Helix	helix 25.01.1 (7275b7f8)
Nushell	0.102.0
Zoxide	0.9.7
Yazi	25.2.11
WezTerm	20240203-110809-5046fc22
Ghostty	1.1.2
*Note: you can use either wezterm or ghostty

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