hstr

Configures bash history for volume and cross-session safety, and binds Ctrl-r to hstr, a full-screen searchable view of it.

Four history settings apply as soon as the plugin is enabled. Everything else - the Ctrl-r binding and the cross-session synchronisation - waits until the hstr binary is on PATH.

Enable it

PLUGINS=(
  https://github.com/jakubro/profile.d-hstr
)

profile.d-install
\. ~/.bashrc

You must install hstr yourself - see Requirements.

What it does

At install time, nothing. See Known issues.

In every interactive shell it applies four history settings:

Setting	Effect
shopt -s histappend	Appends to ~/.bash_history instead of overwriting it, so two shells no longer discard each other's history on exit
HISTCONTROL=ignorespace	A command typed with a leading space is not recorded
HISTFILESIZE=500000	Up from bash's default of 500
HISTSIZE=500000	The in-memory list, matched to the file

Then, only if hstr is on PATH, it sets HSTR_CONFIG=hicolor,raw-history-view, binds Ctrl-r to hstr, and adds history -a; history -n to the front of PROMPT_COMMAND so each command is written to the history file and re-read from it at every prompt. That last part is what makes a command run in one terminal searchable from another immediately, rather than after both have exited.

Using it

Press Ctrl+r, type to filter, arrow keys to move, Enter to run. Ctrl-r again cycles the match strategy between exact, regex and keyword.

To keep a command out of your history, type it with a leading space:

$ ls -la                       # recorded
$  curl -H "Authorization: ..."  # leading space: not recorded

Requirements

hstr itself, which this plugin does not install. From your distribution:

sudo dnf install hstr          # Fedora family
sudo apt install hstr          # Debian family
brew install hh                # macOS

Without it, the history settings still apply and Ctrl-r keeps bash's built-in reverse search. That is the whole symptom - there is no error - so if Ctrl-r looks unchanged after installing this plugin, check that hstr is on PATH.

Known issues

The install script is a placeholder. It prints Installing/Updating hstr..., does nothing, and prints a line telling you to ignore the instructions above it. It has never installed hstr; the binary has to come from your package manager.