You have never tried a terminal text editor this light before.

An incredibly minimal terminal text editor with syntax highlighting and a Lua plugin engine, inspired by nano.

Install

curl -sSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stackwill/ultranano/refs/heads/main/install.sh | bash

Downloads the latest pre-built binary and installs un to ~/.local/bin. Linux only (x86_64 and aarch64). No dependencies required.

Usage

un <filename>

Features

• Unicode-aware cursor movement and editing
• Cut/paste line operations
• Search with wrap-around
• Nano-style keybindings
• Lua plugin engine — keybindings, hooks, syntax highlighting, custom overlays

Keybindings

Key	Action
Ctrl+X	Exit editor
Ctrl+S	Save as (set filename)
Ctrl+W	Find text
Ctrl+K	Cut current line
Ctrl+U	Paste cut line
Arrow keys	Move cursor
PageUp/Down	Scroll page
Home/End	Jump to start/end of line
Enter	Insert newline
Backspace	Delete character before cursor
Delete	Delete character at cursor
Tab	Insert tab character

In prompts:

Key	Action
Enter	Submit
Esc	Cancel

Plugins

Plugins are Lua files in ~/.config/ultranano/plugins/. Every .lua file there is loaded at startup.

-- ~/.config/ultranano/plugins/duplicate_line.lua
un.bind("ctrl+d", function()
    local row = select(1, un.editor.get_cursor())
    local line = un.editor.get_line(row) or ""
    un.editor.insert_line(row + 1, line)
    un.editor.set_message("Line duplicated")
end)

Plugins can bind keys, listen to events (open, save, key, before_render, after_render, render_line), draw custom overlays, and read/modify editor content. See docs/plugins.md for the full API reference.

Uninstallation

curl -sSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stackwill/ultranano/refs/heads/main/uninstall.sh | bash

Or manually: rm ~/.local/bin/un