More built-in plugins

[imsnif]

In order to encourage the Zellij community to write more plugins, we should create more built-in plugins (in addition to the interface and Strider plugins we have now). These plugins will also serve much needed purposes in the Zellij UX:

• A plugin that will allow users to switch between sessions at runtime
• A plugin that will allow users to load and switch between different layouts at runtime
• A plugin that will allow users to search in the scroll-buffer of multiple panes for a certain string

Depends on: #1397

[amtoine]

• A plugin that will allow users to switch between sessions at runtime

we've started working on this first point with @silicakes in silicakes/zellij-sessionizer 😋

i've been able to write a plugin that detaches from the current session, from the CLI: amtoine/zellij-plugin-detach

the only problem we still have is to run the detaching and the reattaching in sequence in the same script... 🤔
TL;DR: the reattaching never happens 😕

[imsnif]

@amtoine - cool efforts! Yes, zellij needs more capabilities in core for such a plugin. It is being worked on (both the capabilities and the plugin)... so just a heads up so that your efforts will not go to waste!

[amtoine]

cool efforts! Yes, zellij needs more capabilities in core for such a plugin. It is being worked on (both the capabilities and the plugin)... so just a heads up so that your efforts will not go to waste!

amazing, these are good news 😊

i'm not sure i'll have time to work on this anyway... but please use the two links above as much as possible if that can help you guys 🙏

can't wait to have a fully working zellij switch-session command in the future 🤩

[demestoss]

Hey!

I've recently switched from Tmux to Zellij and I am super excited about it. It has flexible layout configs out of the box and convenient mode switching which I like a lot

I love my Tmux+Zoxide+FZF configuration for easily starting sessions
So I've started working on my own zellij session management script demestoss/zellij-smart-sessionizer

It is powered by Zoxide+Fzf is capable of selecting layouts for the sessions and totally usable 😄
Also, you can run it inside Zellij to open a new tab with the selected path and layout

Will work on it and try to improve, cause it's my primary multiplexer now.
You can check the video of usage inside the repo

Looking forward to the zellij switch-session functionality to improve current implementation ☘️

[agluck91]

@amtoine @imsnif I was also interested in writing this plugin. It is one of the main things that makes it difficult for me to go full on Zellij, I am still primarily in tmux. Is the majority of this work still happening on @silicakes repo? I would like to go to a central point so I am not doubling up a bunch of effort.

Update: I was getting close with a bash script option to switch "sessions" based on layouts now which I think is going to be FAR superior to the tmux way of doing it. It looks like @demestoss has already got it finished! HAHA The bane around it all is having to manually detach the session and load the layout.

[amtoine]

@agluck91
afaik this feature has been added in Zellij 0.38 😋

[silicakes]

@amtoine @imsnif I was also interested in writing this plugin. It is one of the main things that makes it difficult for me to go full on Zellij, I am still primarily in tmux. Is the majority of this work still happening on @silicakes repo? I would like to go to a central point so I am not doubling up a bunch of effort.

Update: I was getting close with a bash script option to switch "sessions" based on layouts now which I think is going to be FAR superior to the tmux way of doing it. It looks like @demestoss has already got it finished! HAHA The bane around it all is having to manually detach the session and load the layout.

Hi, and thanks for mentioning our project @amtoine!

I'll gladly accept pull requests for any new features, however indeed the latest version of zellij, 0.38, supports session management via ctrl/cmd+o+w which is why I decided to call it 'Cow'.

AFAIK, Cow misses the ability to kill sessions and remove them from the persistent session registry, but I recon it's only a matter of time until it lands.

With that said, I think the point of the various sessionization solutions are when coming from outside of zellij and I think that https://github.com/silicakes/zellij-sessionizer gives you this exact experience 🙏

[agluck91]

I would like to add functionality to be able to call those session functions from Zellij actions so sessions can be switched too from inside an already running session with keyboard shortcuts.

[Andrew15-5]

I also want to have the ability to quickly switch between sessions via keyboard shortcuts. Maybe just add:

keybinds { 
   session {
        bind "1" { GoToSession 1; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
        bind "2" { GoToSession 2; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
        bind "3" { GoToSession 3; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
        bind "4" { GoToSession 4; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
        bind "5" { GoToSession 5; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
        bind "6" { GoToSession 6; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
        bind "7" { GoToSession 7; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
        bind "8" { GoToSession 8; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
        bind "9" { GoToSession 9; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
    }
}

The same way it is implemented with tabs:

keybinds {
    tab {
        bind "1" { GoToTab 1; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
        bind "2" { GoToTab 2; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
        bind "3" { GoToTab 3; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
        bind "4" { GoToTab 4; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
        bind "5" { GoToTab 5; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
        bind "6" { GoToTab 6; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
        bind "7" { GoToTab 7; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
        bind "8" { GoToTab 8; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
        bind "9" { GoToTab 9; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
    }
}

[Andrew15-5]

BTW, I was able to achieve "kinda the same" result by doing:

    shared_except "session" "locked" {
        bind "Ctrl o" { SwitchToMode "Session"; }
        bind "Alt s" {
            LaunchOrFocusPlugin "zellij:session-manager" {
                floating true
                move_to_focused_tab true
            };
            SwitchToMode "Normal";
        }
    }

And if I rename all my sessions (manual labor! Gah!) with <number> <title> then I can press Alt+s > <number> > Enter, which is fast enough for now, but in theory the search can select a tab or a pane instead of a session + I don't want to press Enter to confirm the switch, so it's not ideal.

[Peeeaje]

@imsnif @amtoine @agluck91
I wrote pretty basic sesion switch plugin thanks to recent update.
https://github.com/Peeeaje/zellij-switch-session

Does that help you?