Codec keeps zsh as your line editor, so completion, history, key bindings and plugins like zsh-autosuggestions keep working. It adds the mouse and keyboard habits of a text field on top, and a history that remembers where and how each command ran.
At the prompt, the command you're typing behaves like a text field:
- Click to put the cursor anywhere in it; drag to select part of it; double-click a word, triple-click the whole line.
- Typing replaces the selection; ⌫ and ⌦ delete it; ⌘X cuts it, ⌘C copies it.
- ⇧ with the arrows (and ⌥, Home, End) extends a selection.
- ⌘← / ⌘→ jump to either end of the line, ⇧⌘← / ⇧⌘→ select to them, ⌘⌫ deletes to the start.
zsh's own selection (the region) is what's highlighted, in the theme's selection color.
- Double-click selects a whole token: a path with its line and column (
Sources/App/Main.swift:42:7), a URL, an email address, an IP and port, a flag with its value. Surrounding brackets, quotes and trailing punctuation are left out. - Triple-click selects the line.
- ⌥-drag selects a rectangular block.
⌘-click a file's name in the output to open it in the editor, or a folder's to open it in Finder. It works on what ls lists, the paths git status and grep print, and a compiler's Sources/App/Main.swift:42:7. Codec looks for the name where the command that printed it ran, then in the folders it was given, so after ls Sources its files open too; on the command line you're typing, in the shell's directory. ⌘-click a URL to open it in the browser.
Hold ⌘ to see what opens. Every file and folder name on screen is washed in the theme's accent color, and the one under the pointer is underlined, with a tag showing its icon and, when the name doesn't say it all, the path that opens (Sources/CodecCore/FileTree.swift for a name ls Sources/CodecCore listed). The marks go as soon as you let go of ⌘. Names that aren't files are left alone.
Copy on select is a setting (Settings › Shell › Selection). The scrollback keeps 10,000 lines; ⌘K clears it.
⌘F searches the scrollback. Every match on screen is tinted and the current one is outlined; the bar counts them ("3 of 14"), and marks down the pane's right edge show where the rest are. Return or ⌘G goes to the next match, ⇧Return or ⇧⌘G to the previous one (↓ and ↑ do too), wrapping around; Esc closes the bar. Aa matches case, ab whole words, .* a regular expression. With text selected, ⌘F (or ⌘E) searches for it. Matches keep up as the pane prints more.
Copy or select what a command printed without dragging over it: right-click its output › Copy Output or Select Output, or press ⇧⌘C / ⇧⌘A for the last command. Codec finds a command's output from the command line itself, so it stays right however fast the output scrolled by, and after a resize rewraps the lines.
⌘↑ and ⌘↓ jump between commands in the scrollback. For every command the pane ran, with its output kept even after it leaves the scrollback, open the Commands sidebar.
As you type, the rest of the most recent matching command appears dimmed after the cursor: → or End takes it, ⌥→ takes its next word. If you use zsh-autosuggestions, it keeps doing this instead.
↑ at the prompt works as in any shell: it puts your last command on the line, and each ↑ goes one further back. If you've typed something, it goes through commands starting with it, then commands containing it, newest first. A menu just above the prompt shows where you are among them, the newest nearest the prompt.
The keyboard stays on the command line the whole time:
- ↑ / ↓ move through the menu, the line following along,
- Return runs the command on the line,
- any other key (⌫, typing, ←, →, Tab…) closes the menu and edits the command, as it would after zsh's own ↑,
- Esc, or ↓ past the newest command, puts back what you'd typed.
Click a command to put it on the line, or right-click it to copy it or remove it from history. When nothing matches what you've typed, ↑ just beeps. To search everything instead, use the history search below.
⌃R at the prompt, or ⌘Y anywhere, opens the full search: every command, with where it ran, how long it took, when, and whether it failed, grouped by day. Filter it to this folder, or to failed commands.
Matches rank by how well they match (the start of the command, then anywhere in it, then fuzzy), then by whether they ran in this folder, then by how recent they are. Right-click a command to copy it or its folder, or remove it from history (⌘⌫).
Codec keeps its own record in ~/Library/Application Support/Codec/history.jsonl and includes your zsh history file, so older commands and those from other terminals are there too. Commands typed with a leading space aren't kept. Settings › Shell › History can stop recording, or forget everything recorded so far.
↑ and ⌃R are only taken over where they still do zsh's default (an fzf ⌃R stays fzf's), and multi-line commands keep ↑ for moving between lines. Settings › Shell can turn both off.
- Matching ignores case and finds text inside names:
devcompletesDevelopment,notescompletesmy-notes.txt. - A typo is forgiven in longer words.
- Ambiguous completions open a menu you can move through with the arrows, in the theme's colors, folders first.
Codec loads zsh's completion system if your .zshrc doesn't, and never overrides completion styles you set yourself. Each of these can be turned off in Settings › Shell.
ls shows files in color: folders blue, links cyan, executables green, and every other file in the color its icon has in the file tree, so Swift files are red and Markdown is blue in both. They're the theme's terminal colors, so a listing follows the theme. The same colors go to eza, GNU ls and the completion menu, through CLICOLOR, LSCOLORS and LS_COLORS; any of those your own startup files set wins.
With eza installed, turn on Settings › Shell › Use eza for ls and ls runs eza --icons=auto --group-directories-first: an icon by each name, folders first. An ls alias or function of your own is left alone, unless all it does is turn on color (ls -G). zsh only.
Without eza, Settings offers to install it: Install with Homebrew runs brew install eza in a new tab, where you can watch it, and turns the setting on for the panes you open after. Without Homebrew, it links to eza's install instructions.
Icons show whatever font you use. They're Nerd Fonts' symbols, which Codec carries and falls back to when your font doesn't have them, so starship, lsd, Neovim file trees and anything else that prints them shows them too. A font patched with them (a Nerd Font) keeps its own.