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.
%AppData%\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/
├── main.lua
├── README.md
└── LICENSE

Where:

main.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 under [plugin] of your yazi.toml.

Functional plugin

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

Argument/Option	Description
`[name]`	Required, the name of the plugin to run.
`[args]`	Optional, shell-style arguments passed to the plugin.

For example, plugin test -- foo --bar --baz=qux will run the test plugin with the arguments foo --bar --baz=qux in an async context.

To access the arguments in the plugin, use job.args:

-- ~/.config/yazi/plugins/test.yazi/main.lua
return {
	entry = function(self, job)
		ya.dbg(job.args[1])  -- "foo"
		ya.dbg(job.args.bar) -- true
		ya.dbg(job.args.baz) -- "qux"
	end,
}

Note that currently Yazi only supports positional arguments (foo) and named arguments (--bar), it does not support shorthand arguments like -a.

Shorthands will be treated as positional arguments at the moment, but as Yazi adds support for it in the future, their behavior will change. So please avoid using them to prevent any potential conflicts.

Sync vs Async

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

There is one exception: the user's init.lua is synchronous, since init.lua is often used to initialize plugin configurations:

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

-- ~/.config/yazi/plugins/my-plugin.yazi/main.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.

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:

--- @sync entry
-- ~/.config/yazi/test.yazi/main.lua
return {
  entry = function(state)
    state.i = state.i or 0
    ya.dbg("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 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/main.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("hello from a")
		local h = get_state("hello from 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

Passing data into and returning data from a ya.sync() block involves cross-thread data exchange. If the data contains userdata, it causes Ownership transfer.

Annotations

Each plugin can contain zero or more annotations that specify the behavior of the plugin during runtime.

Each annotation starts with ---, followed by @ and the annotation name, and ends with the annotation's value.

These annotations must be at the very top of the file, with no content before them, and no non-annotation content should appear between annotations.

`@sync`

Specifies that a method in the plugin runs in a sync context instead of the default async context. Available values:

entry: Run the entry method in a sync context.
peek: Run the peek method in a sync context. (Nightly only)

For example:

--- @sync entry
return {
	entry = function() end
}

`@since`

Specifies the minimum Yazi version that the plugin supports.

If specified, and the user's Yazi version is lower than the specified one, an error will be triggered to prompt the user to upgrade their Yazi version, preventing the plugin from being executed accidentally:

--- @since 25.2.13
return {
	--- ...
}

Interface

Previewer

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

local M = {}

function M:peek(job)
	-- ...
end

function M:seek(job)
	-- ...
end

return M

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

Key	Description
`area`	Rect of the available preview area.
`args`	Arguments passed to the previewer.
`file`	File to be previewed.
`skip`	Number of units to skip. The units depend on your previewer, such as lines for code and percentages for videos.

When the user presses J or K to scroll the preview of the file, seek is called, with:

Key	Description
`file`	File being scrolled.
`area`	Rect of the available preview area.
`units`	Number of units to scroll.

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.

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

Preloader

You need to return a table that implements the preload method:

local M = {}

function M:preload(job)
	-- ...
	return false, Err("some error")
end

return M

It receives a job parameter, which is a table:

Key	Description
`area`	Rect of the available preview area.
`args`	Arguments passed to the preloader.
`file`	File to be preloaded.
`skip`	Always `0`

And returns a (complete, err):

complete: Required, Whether the preloading is complete, which is a boolean.
- true: Marks the task as complete, and the task will not be called again.
- false: Marks the task as incomplete, and the task will be retried until it's complete (returns true).
err: Optional, the error to be logged.

When complete = false, the preloader will be re-triggered at the next time point, such as when the user scrolls leading to a page switch. This is usually done for 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.

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

Ownership transfer

Yazi's plugin system inherits Rust's ownership and lifetime concepts.

All userdata are native Rust types that have their own ownership to ensure safe and efficient transfers across different threads, avoiding any memory reallocation overhead. Specifically:

Passing these userdata to a cross-thread function like ya.mgr_emit() transfers ownership. After transfer, the original userdata is no longer available, for example:

local target = Url("/tmp")
ya.mgr_emit("cd", { target })  -- Ownership transferred

ya.dbg(tostring(url)) -- Error: userdata has been destructed

To keep the original, clone a new userdata and pass that instead, but this allocates extra memory - Url() constructor can accept a Url userdata (Nightly only) and return a new clone of that Url:

- ya.mgr_emit("cd", { target })
+ ya.mgr_emit("cd", { Url(target) })

A smarter way is to reverse the order of execution, use the target before it's transferred, to avoid the need for cloning:

local target = Url("/tmp")
local target_str = tostring(target)

ya.mgr_emit("cd", { target })  -- Ownership transferred
ya.dbg(target_str) -- No error

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.
%AppData%\yazi\state\yazi.log on Windows.

Make sure to set the YAZI_LOG environment variable before starting Yazi:

Unix-like
PowerShell

YAZI_LOG=debug yazi

$env:YAZI_LOG = "debug"; yazi

otherwise, no logs will be recorded. Its value can be (in descending order of verbosity):

debug
info
warn
error

Debugging preset plugins

Clone the latest source code.
Go to the yazi-plugin/preset folder and find the plugin you want to debug, then make changes, such as logging certain runtime data.
Build from source and run the output binary with an appropriate YAZI_LOG.

You can build in debug mode (without the --release flag) for faster compilation at the expense of runtime performance.

Usage​

Functional plugin​

Sync vs Async​

Sync context​

Async context​

Annotations​

@sync​

@since​

Interface​

Previewer​

Preloader​

Sendable value​

Ownership transfer​

Debugging​

Logging​

Debugging preset plugins​