elijahmanor/readme.md Secret

## readme.md

      
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    Zellij FAQs

Zellij doesn't seem to work in iTerm2

It does work, but you need to update your Profiles → Keys → General → Left Option key: to Esc+


Can I script a Zellij session and automatically create panes with commands?

Yes, you can create a custom layout and define your own panes and commands.
There is a great tutorial with a video that you can follow that shows you how.
As an example, I created the following kdl file...
layout.kdl

layout {
  pane size=1 borderless=true {
    plugin location="zellij:tab-bar"
  }
  pane split_direction="vertical" {
    pane edit="README.md"
    pane split_direction="horizontal" {
      pane command="cowsay" {
        args "Hello, world!"
      }
      pane command="archey"
      pane command="exa" {
        args "--long"
        args "--header"
        args "--git"
        args "--icons"
      }
    }
  }
  pane size=2 borderless=true {
    plugin location="zellij:status-bar"
  }
}

And assuming you had the above layout.kdl file, you could run something like...
zellij --layout layout.kdl
And the result would be like the following...


How can Zellij and Neovim exist together?

The simpliest way to help zellij not conflict with existing Neovim bindings is to lock the interface with Ctrl + g when using Neovim.
Or you could adjust your keybindings to not use things such as Ctrl + p and Ctrl + n which I heavily use when navigating up and down through lists.
I've seen some go the extra mile and create a custom layout to handle forcing a locked primary tab that is meant for editing. You an look for inspiration from the following reddit post. His editor.kdl file binds the Insert key to swap between tabs and locks or unlocks the tab.
Some others have changed most of the Ctrl- bindings to Alt- instead, which is much less likely to conflict with existing vim or neovim keymaps. See the following for what that could look like.
  normal {
      bind "Alt n" { NewPane; }

      bind "Alt H" { MovePane "Left"; }
      bind "Alt L" { MovePane "Right"; }
      bind "Alt J" { MovePane "Down"; }
      bind "Alt K" { MovePane "Up"; }

      bind "Alt Right" { GoToNextTab; }
      bind "Alt Left" { GoToPreviousTab; }

      bind "Alt f" { ToggleFocusFullscreen; }
      bind "Alt 1" { GoToTab 1; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
      bind "Alt 2" { GoToTab 2; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
      bind "Alt 3" { GoToTab 3; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
      bind "Alt 4" { GoToTab 4; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
      bind "Alt 5" { GoToTab 5; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
      bind "Alt 6" { GoToTab 6; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
      bind "Alt 7" { GoToTab 7; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
      bind "Alt w" { ToggleFloatingPanes; SwitchToMode "Normal"; }
    }

I saw another technique of leaning on the tmux mode and remapped keys in Alacritty since zellij is limited in what keys it can detect.
All that said, the zellij maintainers are aware that this is not ideal, but I'm not sure how or when that will be addressed.


How do I make the UI more minimal?

You can launch zellij with the compact layout using the following: ``zellij --layout compact`.
While you are using zellij, you can disable pane frames by hitting the Ctrl + <p> + <z> keycombo.
If you like these settings, you can make them the default in your zellij config file (see options doc).
default_layout "compact"
pane_frames false

If you don't already have a config, you can create one with the following command:
 zellij setup --dump-config > ~/.config/zellij/config.kdl