Fzf 0.66.0 introduces "–raw mode"

Quick summary

This version introduces many new features centered around the new "raw" mode.

1. Introducing "raw" mode

This version introduces a new "raw" mode (named so because it shows the list
"unfiltered"). In raw mode, non-matching items stay in their original positions,
but appear dimmed. This allows you see surrounding items of a match and better
understand the context of it. You can enable raw mode by default with --raw,
but it's often more useful when toggled dynamically with the toggle-raw
action.

While non-matching items are displayed in a dimmed color, they are treated just
like matching items, so you place the cursor on them and perform any action. If
you prefer to navigate only through matching items, use the down-match and
up-match actions, which are from now on bound to CTRL-N and CTRL-P
respectively, and also to ALT-DOWN and ALT-UP.

Customizing the behavior

In raw mode, the input list is presented in its original order, unfiltered, and
your cursor will not move to the matching item automatically. Here are ways to
customize the behavior.

Customizing the look

Gutter

To make the mode visually distinct, the gutter column is rendered in a dashed
line using ▖ character. But you can customize it with the --gutter-raw CHAR
option.

Color and style of non-matching items

Non-matching items are displayed in a dimmed color by default, but you can
change it with the --color nomatch:... option.

For colored input, dimming alone may not be enough, and you may prefer to remove
colors entirely. For that case, a new special style attribute strip has been
added.

Conditional actions for raw mode

You may want to perform different actions depending on whether the current item
is a match or not. For that, fzf now exports $FZF_RAW environment variable.

It's:

• Undefined if raw mode is disabled
• 1 if the current item is a match
• 0 otherwise

Leveraging raw mode in shell integration

The CTRL-R binding (command history) now lets you toggle raw mode with ALT-R.

2. Style changes

The screenshot on the right shows the updated gutter style:

This version includes a few minor updates to fzf's classic visual style:

• The gutter column is now narrower, rendered with the left-half block character (▌).
• Markers no longer use background colors.
• The --color base16 theme (alias: 16) has been updated for better compatibility with both dark and light themes.

3. --listen now supports Unix domain sockets

If an argument to --listen ends with .sock, fzf will listen on a Unix
domain socket at the specified path.

Note that any existing file at the given path will be removed before creating
the socket, so avoid using an important file path.

4. Added options

--gutter CHAR

The gutter column can now be customized using --gutter CHAR and styled with
--color gutter:.... Examples:

--gutter-raw CHAR

As noted above, the --gutter-raw CHAR option was also added for customizing the gutter column in raw mode.

5. Added actions

The following actions were introduced to support working with raw mode:

6. Added environment variables

$FZF_DIRECTION

$FZF_DIRECTION is now exported to child processes, indicating the list direction of the current layout:

• up for the default layout
• down for reverse or reverse-list

This simplifies writing transform actions involving layout-dependent actions
like {up,down}-match, {up,down}-selected, and toggle+{up,down}.

$FZF_SOCK

When fzf is listening on a Unix domain socket using --listen, the path to the
socket is exported as $FZF_SOCK, analogous to $FZF_PORT for TCP sockets.

$FZF_RAW

As described above, $FZF_RAW is now exported to child processes in raw mode,
indicating whether the current item is a match (1) or not (0). It is not
defined when not in raw mode.

$FZF_CTRL_R_COMMAND

You can opt-out CTRL-R binding from the shell integration by setting
FZF_CTRL_R_COMMAND to an empty string. Setting it to any other value is not
supported and will result in a warning.

7. Added key support for --bind

Pull request #3996 added support
for many additional keys for --bind option, such as ctrl-backspace.

8. Breaking changes

Hiding the gutter column

In the previous versions, the recommended way to hide the gutter column was to
set --color gutter:-1. That's because the gutter column was just a space
character, reversed. But now that it's using a visible character (▌), applying
the default color is no longer enough to hide it. Instead, you can set it to
a space character.

--color option

In the previous versions, some elements had default style attributes applied and
you would have to explicitly unset them with regular attribute if you wanted
to reset them. This is no longer needed now, as the default style attributes
are applied only when you do not specify any color or style for that element.

Compatibility changes

Starting with this release, fzf is built with Go 1.23. Support for some old OS versions has been dropped.

See https://go.dev/wiki/MinimumRequirements.