Yazelix v4.1
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)
- Helix is called when you hit enter on a file in the "sidebar"
- If helix is already open, in a pane next to the sidebar, it will open in a new buffer on that pane (magic)
- 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
Improvements of the v4.1 over v4
- The open_file script is now written in nushell, with some modifications:
- Now working with files with spaces in the filename
- Now more sensitive to detecting hx on the next pane... previously it would sometimes not detect helix and thus open hx in a new pane instead of just opening the file in a new buffer the way it should)
- Now it cds into the folder of the file being opened, if you clicked on a file, or into the folder itself, if you clicked on a folder
- I do prefer quite a lot being able to write nushell instead of bash
- Nushell is now a dependency (technically not an improvement, but feels like one, for me)
Improvements of the v4 over v3
- ROUNDED CORNERS
- A wish come true: when you hit enter in a file or folder in yazi, if helix is open in a pane next to yazi, it will open in a helix buffer
- All it took was some shell scripting magic...
- It will also change your working dir, so when you press
SPACE f
you open the picker in that folder you're actually in
- New-tab layout has improved. Now new panes are just yazi in a 100% width pane, working sort of like a picker.
- You just open a file or folder from yazi and it goes to its proper place as a sidebar to the right
- Added a dedicated kb to make panes full screen
alt f
- The repo was previously called
zellij
so people could just clone it in their .config
folder directly, but this just sounded off.
- The project's name is yazelix, not zellij, after all. So now the repo name is yazelix the way god intended
- Take a look at the new instructions to set it up just below!
Instructions to set it up
- Make sure yazi, zellij, helix, and nushell are installed and in your path
- Just clone this repo in your
~/.config
dir
- Take a look at the
configure wezterm
step on https://github.com/luccahuguet/rustifier to see how to configure yazelix on wezterm
- 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)
- Another option, if you wish, run this command manually every time you open yazelix
- The recommended shell is Wezterm though. More on that in the Notes section below
- 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
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?
- The opening of files in a helix buffer implementation works but feels like a workaround. But it does not matter much. Helix will get a plugin system and then a file tree plugin probably between the beginning and middle of 2025 anyways..
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.
Details: Base Layout
The initial layout includes one usable pane (actually 4, counting the tab-bar, status-bar and sidebar):
- Tab-bar at the top
- Status-bar at the bottom
- Yazi pane (20% width) acting as a sidebar on the left
- Empty pane on the right
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, but make youre you are on yazi full pane (or press alt f
) or it will be too cramped to read
- 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
Notes
- You can add more swap layouts as needed, using the KDL files in
layouts
.
- I recommend using wezterm as your terminal
- because it can be configured to remove its native tabs, very extensible, including its keybindings (haven't found a conflict yet)
- very performant
- If you test this with nvim and it works, let me know (see the issue here)
- 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
Contributing to Yazelix
See here in contributing
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