Plugins (BETA)

You can extend Yazi's functionality through Lua plugins, which need to be placed in the plugins subdirectory of Yazi's configuration directory, so either:

~/.config/yazi/plugins/ on Unix-like systems.
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\yazi\config\plugins\ on Windows.

~/.config/yazi/
├── init.lua
├── plugins/
│   ├── foo.yazi/
│   └── bar.yazi/
└── yazi.toml

Each plugin is a directory with a kebab-case name, ending in .yazi, and containing at least the following files:

~/.config/yazi/plugins/bar.yazi/
├── init.lua
├── README.md
└── LICENSE

Where:

init.lua is the entry point of this plugin.
README.md is the documentation of this plugin.
LICENSE is the license file for this plugin.

Usage

A plugin has two usages:

Functional plugin: Bind the plugin command to a key in keymap.toml, and activate it by pressing the key.
Custom previewers, preloaders: Configure them as previewers or preloaders in your [plugin] of yazi.toml file.

Functional plugin

You can bind a plugin command to a specific key in your keymap.toml with:

Argument/Option	Description
`[name]`	The name of the plugin to run.
`--sync`	Run the plugin in a sync context.
`--args=[args]`	Shell-style arguments passed to the plugin.

For example, plugin test --sync --args='hello world' will run the test plugin with the arguments hello and world in a sync context.

To receive the arguments in the plugin, use args:

-- ~/.config/yazi/plugins/test.yazi/init.lua
return {
	entry = function(self, args)
		ya.err(args[1]) -- "hello"
		ya.err(args[2]) -- "world"
	end,
}

Sync vs Async

The plugin system is designed with an async-first philosophy. Therefore, unless specifically specified, such as the --sync for the plugin command, all plugins run in an async context.

There is one exception - all init.lua are synchronous, which includes:

The init.lua for Yazi itself, i.e. ~/.config/yazi/init.lua.
The init.lua for each plugin, e.g. ~/.config/yazi/plugins/bar.yazi/init.lua.

This is because init.lua is commonly used to initialize plugin configurations, and this process is synchronous:

-- ~/.config/yazi/init.lua
require("bar"):setup {
	key1 = "value1",
	key2 = "value2",
	-- ...
}

-- ~/.config/yazi/plugins/bar.yazi/init.lua
return {
	setup = function(state, opts)
		-- Save the user configuration to the plugin's state
		state.key1 = opts.key1
		state.key2 = opts.key2
	end,
}

Sync context

The sync context accompanies the entire app lifecycle, which is active during UI rendering (UI plugins), and on executing sync functional plugins (plugin command with --sync).

For better performance, the sync context is created only at the app's start and remains singular throughout. Thus, plugins running within this context share states, prompting plugin developers to use plugin-specific state persistence for their plugins to prevent global space contamination:

-- ~/.config/yazi/test.yazi/init.lua
return {
  entry = function(state)
    state.i = state.i or 0
    ya.err("i = " .. state.i)

    state.i = state.i + 1
  end,
}

Yazi initializes the state for each sync plugin before running, and it exists independently for them throughout the entire lifecycle. Do the plugin --sync test three times, and you will see the log output:

i = 0
i = 1
i = 2

Async context

When a plugin is executed asynchronously, an isolated async context is created for it automatically.

In this context, you can use all the async functions supported by Yazi, and it operates concurrently with the main thread, ensuring that the main thread is not blocked.

You can also obtain a small amount of app data from the sync context by calling a "sync function":

-- ~/.config/yazi/plugins/my-async-plugin.yazi/init.lua
local set_state = ya.sync(function(state, a)
	-- You can get/set the state of the plugin through `state` parameter
	-- in the `sync()` block
	state.a = a
end)

local get_state = ya.sync(function(state, b)
	-- You can access all app data through the `cx`,
	-- within the `sync()` block, in an async plugin
	local h = cx.active.current.hovered
	return h and state.a .. tostring(h.url) or b
end)

return {
	entry = function()
		set_state("this is a")
		local h = get_state("this is b")
		-- Do some time-consuming work, such as reading file, network request, etc.
		-- It will execute concurrently with the main thread
	end,
}

Note that ya.sync() call must be at the top level:

-- Wrong !!!
local get_state
if some_condition then
	get_state = ya.sync(function(state)
		-- ...
	end)
end

Interface

Previewer

A previewer needs to return a table that implements the peek and seek functions. Both functions take a table parameter self and do not return any values:

return {
	peek = function(self) return end,
	seek = function(self) return end,
}

When the user presses j or k to switch between hovering files, peek is called, with:

Key	Description
`file`	The File to be previewed.
`skip`	The number of units to skip. The units largely depend on your previewer, such as lines for code and percentages for videos.
`area`	The Rect of the available preview area.
`window`	The Rect of the entire terminal window.

When the user presses Alt-j or Alt-k to scroll the preview of this file, seek is called, with:

Key	Description
`file`	The File being scrolled.
`area`	The Rect of the available preview area.

The task of peek is to draw in the preview area based on the values of file and skip. This process is asynchronous.

The task of seek is to change the value of skip based on user behavior and trigger peek again. It is synchronous, meaning you can access app data through cx.

Here are some preset previewers and preloaders you can refer to: Yazi Preset Plugins

Preloader

You need to return a table that implements the preload function, it receives a self parameter, which is a table with the same fields as peek():

return {
	preload = function(self)
		return 1
	end,
}

And has the following return values:

Binary	Decimal
`0 0`	0	Failure, don't continue
`0 1`	1	Success, don't continue
`1 0`	2	Failure, continue
`1 1`	3	Success, continue

When "continue" is set, the preloader can reload the files that have already been loaded at the next time point, such as when the user scrolls, leading to a page switch. This is usually done for the either:

Retrying in case of file loading failure
Refreshing the file status upon successful loading

Yazi will automatically invoke the preload concurrently for each file that matches the preload rules on the page.

When the user specifies multi = true for it, the plugin allows preloading multiple files at once. In this case, self.file will be replaced by self.files.

Typically, a preloader only needs to implement one of them - either single or multiple. This depends on the specific task and the magnitude of the workload. If it truly requires loading multiple files at once, the user needs to be prompted to enable the multi option for it.

Sendable value

Yazi's plugin can run concurrently on multiple threads. For better performance, only the following types of combinations can be used for inter-thread data exchange:

Nil
Boolean
Number
String
Url
Table and nested tables, with the above types as values

Debugging

Please ensure that your ~/.config/yazi/init.lua includes valid Lua code with the correct syntax, otherwise will result in Yazi being unable to parse and execute your init.lua to initialize.

We recommend installing a Lua plugin in your editor for syntax checking to avoid any syntax errors. For example, install the Lua plugin for VSCode, and for Neovim, use nvim-lspconfig to configure your Lua LSP.

If you have no experience with Lua, you can quickly get started through https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/lua/

Logging

If you want to debug some runtime data, use ya.dbg() and ya.err() to print what you want to debug to either:

~/.local/state/yazi/yazi.log on Unix-like systems.
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\yazi\state\yazi.log on Windows.

Usage​

Functional plugin​

Sync vs Async​

Sync context​

Async context​

Interface​

Previewer​

Preloader​

Sendable value​

Debugging​

Logging​