Microsoft added a neat feature in the 7.3.0 release of PowerShell called Predictive IntelliSense which autosuggests commands to enter as you type based on the history. Such a suggestion can be accepted simply by pressing the → (right arrow) key.
Can a similar effect be achieved in Ubuntu's Bash? I do know I could use Ctrl+R, but it does not seem as convenient.
There is a replacement for the built-in Ctrl + R called hstr. It allows you to search command history, matching all search tokens at the same time (among other things), and cycle through the results using arrow keys. Here is a short demonstration screen-cast that can also be viewed from hstr :
About:
Easily view, navigate and search your command history with shell history suggest box for bash and zsh.
HSTR is included in Ubuntu 21.10 and newer releases. To install run:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install hstr
To Install HSTR on Ubuntu 21.04 and older, run:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ultradvorka/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install hstr
Then configure hstr for bash :
hstr --show-bash-configuration >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
And then use Ctrl + R
As also suggested by @muru in a comment, there is the ble.sh ―Bash Line Editor― that can do what you want. Before installing it, you have to install its dependencies (if not already installed): git, make (GNU make), and gawk (GNU awk). You can do that with the following command:
sudo apt install git make gawk
Then, to install ble.sh run the following commands:
git clone --recursive --depth 1 --shallow-submodules https://github.com/akinomyoga/ble.sh.git
make -C ble.sh install PREFIX=~/.local
echo 'source ~/.local/share/blesh/ble.sh' >> ~/.bashrc
The above commands will download the repository in your current directory, install it in ~/.local/share/blesh/ble.sh and add the required line in your ~/.bashrc.
After that close and reopen your terminal and you should have autosuggestions enabled:
If you want to uninstall ble.sh, follow these steps (from the project's 1.6 Uninstall section):
Close all the
ble.shsessions (the Bash interactive sessions withble.sh)Remove related user data. If you would like to keep them, you can skip these steps.
- Remove the added lines in
.bashrc.- Remove
blercfiles (~/.blercor~/.config/blesh/init.sh) if any.- Remove the state directory
~/.local/state/bleshif any.Remove the directory where
ble.shis installed. When you useout/ble.shinside the working tree of the git repository, the installed directory is the directory of the repository. When you useble.shinstalled bymake install, the installed directory is<PREFIX>/share/bleshwhere<PREFIX>(default:~/.local) is the prefix specified to make install in the installation stage. When you use the version extracted from a tarball, the directory created by extracting the tarball is the installed directory.Remove the cache directory
~/.cache/bleshif any.Remove the temporary directory
/tmp/bleshif any [ Only needed when your system does not automatically clears/tmp].
I think using fish might help you with this.
sudo apt install fish
then open terminal
right click on it and go to preferences -> Command -> Enable Run a custom command instead of shell
and write fish in below input.
Restart terminal and you're good to go :)
zsh-autosuggestionslooks really similar and if you're not familiar then you can probably see it in use on some newer kali linux tutorials or video demos that show the terminal as zsh with the autosuggestions has been the default on kali for the past few years now. – mchid Nov 25 '23 at 05:18