Ubuntu – How to share history between terminals in zsh

command linehistoryzsh

How can it be achieved so that every command that is entered, is visible in every open terminal's history?

When having multiple terminals open, the history isn't shared, i.e. what you entered in one terminals history, doesn't show up in another one. Think of an alternative to Bash's PROMPT_COMMAND="history -a" (which saves the history before the prompt is beeing displayed).

Best Answer

The following options would be applicable:

To save every command before it is executed (this is different from bash's history -a solution):
```
 setopt inc_append_history
```
To read the history file everytime history is called upon as well as the functionality from inc_append_history:
```
 setopt share_history
```

These can be set in your .zshrc file.

⚠️ Either set inc_append_history or share_history but not both. (see comments bellow)

When share_history is enabled, it reads and writes to the history file.
When inc_append_history is enabled, it only writes to the history file.

Related for bash:

Is it possible to make writing to .bash_history immediate?

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Bash history handling with multiple terminals

The bash session that is saved is the one for the terminal that is closed the latest. If you want to save the commands for every session, you could use the trick explained here.

export PROMPT_COMMAND='history -a'
To quote the manpage: “If set, the value is executed as a command prior to issuing each primary prompt.”

So every time my command has finished, it appends the unwritten history item to ~/.bash_history before displaying the prompt (only $PS1) again.

So after putting that line in /etc/bash.bashrc I don’t have to find myself reinventing wheels or lose valuable seconds re-typing stuff just because I was lazy with my terminals.

Anyway, you'll need to take into account that commands from different sessions will be mixed in your history file so it won't be so straightforward to read it later.

Ubuntu – Command history in zsh

Check out the available options to control history. I think you want

setopt append_history no_inc_append_history no_share_history

This is the default zsh setup, by the way.

You can save the history explicitly at any point with fc -AI and merge it back in with fc -RI.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Bash history handling with multiple terminals

Ubuntu – Command history in zsh

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