Omarchy Bash Autosuggest

Fast, Fish-like history suggestions and command-line motion for Bash, tuned for Omarchy 4.

Type the beginning of a command and the newest matching history entry appears as a faint italic suffix. Accept all or part of it, keep typing to refine it, or dismiss it without changing the command you typed.

$ git c▏heckout main
       └─ faint suggestion; Right accepts it

This is a small Bash/Readline extension, not a replacement shell or an Omarchy Shell/Quickshell plugin. It keeps Omarchy's Starship prompt, Tab completion, fzf history search, terminal theme, and Bash history file.

Install on Omarchy 4

Run this in a terminal:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cyppe/omarchy-bash-autosuggest/main/install.sh | bash && exec bash

The installer:

1. Checks the small build dependency set with Omarchy's package helper.
2. Clones the project to ~/.local/share/omarchy-bash-autosuggest.
3. Compiles and load-checks the module against the local Bash and Readline.
4. Backs up ~/.bashrc.
5. Appends one clearly marked loader block to ~/.bashrc.

Dependencies already included with a normal Omarchy installation are left alone. If any are missing, Omarchy may ask for sudo permission to install them. The extension itself is installed entirely in your home directory.

If you prefer to inspect the installer first:

git clone https://github.com/cyppe/omarchy-bash-autosuggest.git
cd omarchy-bash-autosuggest
less install.sh
./install.sh
exec bash

Everyday controls

Suggestion acceptance is deliberately simple:

Key	With a suggestion visible
Keep typing	Refine or replace the suggestion
Right Arrow or Ctrl-F	Accept the complete suggestion
Alt-F or Alt-Right	Accept through the next Readline word
Ctrl-Right	Accept through the next Bash shell word/token
End or Ctrl-E	Accept the complete suggestion
Ctrl-G	Hide this suggestion until the typed line changes
Enter	Execute only text that was typed or explicitly accepted
Any other edit or motion	Remove the ghost suffix, then perform its normal action

When no suggestion is visible, these keys retain their ordinary Readline meaning.

History

Key	Action
Up or Ctrl-P	Search backward using the text already typed as a prefix
Down or Ctrl-N	Search forward using the same prefix
Up on an empty line	Walk through all history, newest first
Down past the newest match	Restore the line present before navigation
Ctrl-R	Open Omarchy's full interactive fzf history search

Both common terminal encodings for Up and Down are bound, so the behavior is consistent in a regular terminal and inside tmux. Recalled history is shown as plain command text rather than immediately growing a second ghost suggestion.

The loader adds erasedups to the user's existing HISTCONTROL. On Omarchy, whose default is ignoreboth, the result is ignoreboth:erasedups: leading- space commands and adjacent duplicates remain ignored, and saving a repeated command removes its older copies.

Motion and completion

Key	Action
Alt-F or Alt-Right	Move forward by a Readline word
Alt-B or Alt-Left	Move backward by a Readline word
Ctrl-Right	Move forward by a shell-aware word
Ctrl-Left	Move backward by a shell-aware word
Tab / Shift-Tab	Cycle completion candidates forward / backward

Readline words are useful for small movements within punctuation. Shell words follow Bash token boundaries, so quoted and escaped arguments move more like the shell parses them. Tab completion remains Omarchy's menu completion; the extension fixes its internal repeat state so repeated Tab presses keep cycling.

Other repeat-sensitive Readline commands—including yank-pop and repeated yank-last-arg—also retain their normal behavior.

Visual behavior

Ghost text is faint and italic but has no hard-coded foreground color, so it inherits the active Omarchy terminal theme. Completion prefixes use the theme's configured completion color. The audible/visual Readline bell is disabled for a calmer prompt.

The styling is implemented with Readline's active region and restored whenever no suggestion is present or the extension is disabled.

How suggestions are selected

Suggestions are:

• read directly from Bash's in-memory history;
• matched case-sensitively against the complete text before the cursor;
• selected newest-first;
• displayed only when the cursor is at the end of a non-empty command;
• hidden while browsing history;
• omitted for multiline history entries;
• bounded to the newest 8,192 history entries by default.

Before normal editing or command execution, the extension removes every character that was not explicitly accepted. Enter therefore cannot accidentally execute ghost text.

Configuration

Put configuration before the installer block in ~/.bashrc.

Change the bounded history scan:

export OMARCHY_AUTOSUGGEST_HISTORY_LIMIT=4096

Keep the suggestions but opt out of the additional history, bell, completion, arrow, and Ctrl-arrow tuning:

export OMARCHY_AUTOSUGGEST_TUNE_READLINE=0

This is useful when you maintain all Readline bindings yourself. Load the extension after those bindings. If another tool changes bindings later, run omarchy_autosuggest refresh so the extension can wrap the new final map.

Available maintenance commands:

omarchy_autosuggest status
omarchy_autosuggest version
omarchy_autosuggest disable
omarchy_autosuggest enable
omarchy_autosuggest refresh
omarchy_autosuggest limit 8192

limit changes the current shell only; the environment variable applies to future shells.

Design and safety

• No daemon or background process.
• No separate history database.
• No network access after installation.
• No subprocess or script on each key press.
• No changes under /usr/share/omarchy.
• No hard-coded terminal color.
• Bounded history scanning.
• Safe fallback: if a rebuild or load fails, Bash continues without suggestions.

The module interposes on Readline commands in-process. It preserves the real previous Readline function while dispatching, which is what allows history search, menu completion, yank-pop, and other repeated motions to continue across consecutive key presses.

The compiled module is typically under 20 KB. It is built locally because Bash loadable modules must match the installed Bash and Readline ABI.

Update

Run the installation command again:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cyppe/omarchy-bash-autosuggest/main/install.sh | bash && exec bash

The installer performs a fast-forward update, rebuilds, and load-checks the module. The shell loader also rebuilds automatically when Bash, Readline, the C source, or the Makefile is newer than the installed module.

Uninstall

~/.local/share/omarchy-bash-autosuggest/uninstall.sh && exec bash

The uninstaller backs up ~/.bashrc, removes only its marked loader block, and deletes the project checkout. It does not touch Bash history.

Dotfile managers and custom layouts

The automatic installer is designed for regular, unmanaged Omarchy dotfiles. If .bashrc is generated by chezmoi, yadm, or another manager, clone and build the project, then manage this loader near the end of the interactive section:

_oba_data_home="${XDG_DATA_HOME:-$HOME/.local/share}"
if [[ -r $_oba_data_home/omarchy-bash-autosuggest/shell/init.bash ]]; then
  source "$_oba_data_home/omarchy-bash-autosuggest/shell/init.bash"
fi
unset _oba_data_home

Load it after Omarchy's default Bash configuration and any personal Readline, completion, or fzf bindings.

Compatibility

The supported target is Omarchy 4 or newer with Bash 5 and Readline 8. The installer can run on another Bash-based distribution when the Bash and Readline development headers are already available, but Omarchy is the tested and supported environment.

Both Emacs and vi Readline keymaps are wrapped by the C module. The documented shortcuts follow Omarchy's default Emacs-style setup.

Development

make check
make test

make check runs GCC's static analyzer, Bash syntax validation, and ShellCheck. make test builds the module, verifies its control commands, then drives a real interactive Bash through a pseudo-terminal. The regression suite covers repeated history traversal, restoring the original line, Tab cycling, yank-pop, repeated last-argument recall, suggestion acceptance, Ctrl-G dismissal, and history/suggestion separation.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later. See LICENSE.