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

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

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
  • Thanks for that!

Contributing to Yazelix

See here in contributing

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