You might be interested in https://github.com/ellie/atuin
> Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite database, and records additional context for your commands.
In Kera Desktop: open-source, cross-platform, web-based desktop environmentellie
atuin
Rust2021–2023
ellie / atuin
atuin
✨ Magical shell history
28Distinct people
29Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
51GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
✨ Magical shell history
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- cantino/mcfly · linked in 4 of the same discussions
- larkery/zsh-histdb · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by month29 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2021-05-07 19:21:02 UTC to 2023-06-09 18:22:36 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2021 | 2021-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Jun 2021 | 2021-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2021 | 2021-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2021 | 2021-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2021 | 2021-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2021 | 2021-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2021 | 2021-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Dec 2021 | 2021-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Jan 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Feb 2022 | 2022-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 2022 | 2022-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 2022 | 2022-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| May 2022 | 2022-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Jun 2022 | 2022-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2022 | 2022-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2022 | 2022-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Sep 2022 | 2022-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2022 | 2022-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2022 | 2022-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| Dec 2022 | 2022-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Jan 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 2023 | 2023-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Mar 2023 | 2023-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Apr 2023 | 2023-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| May 2023 | 2023-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 10 | 1 | 9 |
| Jun 2023 | 2023-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
magical shell history
English | 简体中文
Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite database, and records
additional context for your commands. Additionally, it provides optional and
fully encrypted synchronisation of your history between machines, via an Atuin
server.
exit code, duration, time and command shown
As well as the search UI, it can do things like this:
# search for all successful `make` commands, recorded after 3pm yesterday
atuin search --exit 0 --after "yesterday 3pm" make
You may use either the server I host, or host your own! Or just don't use sync
at all. As all history sync is encrypted, I couldn't access your data even if
I wanted to. And I really don't want to.
Features
rebind ctrl-r and up (configurable) to a full screen history search UI
store shell history in a sqlite database
back up and sync encrypted shell history
the same history across terminals, across sessions, and across machines
log exit code, cwd, hostname, session, command duration, etc
calculate statistics such as "most used command"
old history file is not replaced
quick-jump to previous items with Alt-<num>
switch filter modes via ctrl-r; search history just from the current session, directory, or globally
enter to execute a command, tab to edit
Documentation
Quickstart
Install
Setting up sync
Import history
Basic usage
Supported Shells
zsh
bash
fish
nushell
xonsh
powershell (tier 2 support)
Community
Forum
Atuin has a community forum, please ask here for help and support: https://forum.atuin.sh/
IRC
We're also available via #atuin on libera.chat
Discord
Atuin also has a community Discord, available here
Quickstart
This will sign you up for the Atuin Cloud sync server. Everything is end-to-end encrypted, so your secrets are safe!
Read more in the docs for an offline setup, self hosted server, and more.
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://setup.atuin.sh | sh
atuin register -u <USERNAME> -e <EMAIL>
atuin import auto
atuin sync
Then restart your shell!
Note
For Bash users: The above sets up bash-preexec for necessary hooks, but
bash-preexec has limitations. For details, please see the
Bash
section of the shell plugin documentation.
Security
If you find any security issues, we'd appreciate it if you could alert ellie@atuin.sh
Contributors
Made with contrib.rocks.
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
29 sourcesOkay getting real off-topic now (welcome to HN) but this is not what I expected:
https://github.com/ellie/atuin/issues/952#issuecomment-15378...
https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/14290
Apparently when SQLite calls `ftruncate` on the `-shm` file, ZFS will sometimes block for several seconds. Maybe it's waiting for txg timeout? Strange.
In Cases where full scans are better than indexesThis project was mentioned recently here - it does this locally, saving to sqlite.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35839470
https://github.com/ellie/atuin
In Session recording for Tailscale SSH in betaI tried it out and I couldn't really figure a way to `atuin init` on Powershell, as it requires one of the supported shells as a parameter.
I've also seen a couple of PRs such as [1] that consider Windows support a dead-end as of 2021, so I assumed it to be a dead-end as well. Maybe this user is on WSL? That'd seemingly work as it can get bash/zsh or anything running there.
[1] https://github.com/ellie/atuin/issues/135
In Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite databaseIt sounds like it might not work as well for bash. https://github.com/ellie/atuin/issues/909
In Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite databaseIt looks like it's not possible to export the history to a format the shell can import[0], so if I wanted to try this out, my commands would be locked there.
It looks interesting, so if I'm overlooking a way to do this with fish, I'd experiment with it.
[0]: https://github.com/ellie/atuin/issues/816
In Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite databasehttps://github.com/ellie/atuin/blob/main/atuin-client/src/im...
> // we can skip past things like invalid utf8
No, you can't! Thanks to some bizarre escaping that happens when ZSH (and BASH, I think) dumps commands to the history file, any command with non-latin1 characters will break here and won't be read, moreover - silently! The other possibility is that you'll import wrong characters.
Grep the ZSH source for "unmetafy", you'll see; I have it extracted here: https://github.com/piotrklibert/zsh-merge-hist/blob/master/u...
In Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite databasethere's this little gotcha you might want to be aware of: https://github.com/ellie/atuin/issues/752#issuecomment-14518...
In Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite databaseAtuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite database
551 points · Open discussionI like to use atuin for this. Basically indispensable to me now.
https://github.com/ellie/atuin
In Fulfilling a reader's request for my “dot files”Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite database
3 points · Open discussionI love fuzzy shell history. Game changer in terms of shell productivity.
I use atuin[0] instead of fzf as I find the experience a bit nicer and it has history backups built in (disclaimer, I am a maintainer)
Some of our users still prefer fzf because they are used to how it fuzzy finds, but we're running an experiment with skim[1] which allows us to embed the fuzzy engine without much overhead - hopefully giving them back that fzf-like experience
[0]: https://github.com/ellie/atuin
[1]: https://github.com/lotabout/skim
In So you've installed `fzf` – now what?Atuin.sh: Sync, search and backup shell history with Atuin
2 points · Open discussionI'm a big fan of Atuin (fuzzy shell history search) and lately I've been using Helix for most of programming. Check out Btop or erdtree as well.
https://github.com/ellie/atuin
https://github.com/helix-editor/helix
https://github.com/aristocratos/btop
https://github.com/solidiquis/erdtree
In Ask HN: macOS apps/utils you can’t live without?Showing the 15 most recent of 29 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.