nnn/plugins

To extend the capabilities of nnn, plugins are introduced. Plugins are scripts which nnn can communicate with and trigger. This mechanism fits perfectly with the fundamental design to keep the core file manager lean and fast, by delegating repetitive (but not necessarily file manager-specific) tasks to the plugins.

The currently available plugins are listed below.

Plugin (a-z)	Lang	Deps	Description
boom	sh	moc	Play random music from dir
dups	sh	find, md5sum, sort uniq xargs	List non-empty duplicate files in current dir
checksum	sh	md5sum, sha256sum	Create and verify checksums
fzy-open	sh	fzy, xdg-open	Fuzzy find a file in dir subtree and edit or xdg-open
getplugs	sh	wget	Update plugins
hexview	sh	xxd	View a file in hex in $PAGER
imgresize	sh	imgp	Resize images in dir to screen resolution
imgur	bash	-	Upload an image to imgur (from imgur-screenshot)
ipinfo	sh	curl, whois	Fetch external IP address and whois information
kdeconnect	sh	kdeconnect-cli	Send selected files to an Android device
moclyrics	sh	ddgr, moc	Show lyrics of the track playing in moc
mocplay	sh	moc	Appends (and plays, see script) selection/dir/file in moc
ndiff	sh	vimdiff	Diff for selection (limited to 2 for directories)
nmount	sh	pmount, udisks2	Toggle mount status of a device as normal user
nwal	sh	nitrogen	Set image as wallpaper using nitrogen
organize	sh	file	Auto-organize files in directories by file type
pastebin	sh	pastebinit	Paste contents of (text) file to paste.ubuntu.com
pdfview	sh	pdftotext/ mupdf-tools	View PDF file in $PAGER
picker	sh	nnn	Pick files and list one per line (to pipe)
pywal	sh	pywal	Set image as wallpaper, change terminal colorscheme
readit	sh	pdftotext, mpv, pico2wave	Read a PDF or text file aloud
ringtone	sh	date, ffmpeg	Create a variable bitrate mp3 ringtone from file
splitjoin	sh	split, cat	Split file or join selection
sxiv	sh	sxiv	View images in dir, set wallpaper, copy path (config)
thumb	sh	lsix	View thumbnail of an image or dir of images
transfer	sh	curl	Upload file to transfer.sh
upgrade	sh	wget	Upgrade nnn manually on Debian 9 Stretch
vidthumb	sh	ffmpegthumbnailer, lsix	Show video thumbnails in terminal
viuimg	sh	viu, less	View an image or images in dir

Installing plugins

Download the getplugs plugin and execute it anywhere to get all the plugins installed to ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-$HOME/.config}/nnn/plugins. You can run it again later to update the plugins. It backs up earlier plugins.

NOTE: getplugs also downloads the launcher nlaunch and tries to place it at /usr/local/bin/ using sudo. If it fails you have to place nlauch manually somewhere in your $PATH.

File access from plugins

Plugins can access:

• all files in the directory (nnn switches to the dir where the plugin is to be run so the dir is $PWD for the plugin)
• the current file under the cursor (the file name is passed as the argument to a plugin)
• the current selection (by reading the file .selection in config dir, see the plugin ndiff)

Each script has a Description section which provides more details on what the script does, if applicable.

Usage

There are 2 ways to run plugins:

1. Directly with x-key:

   export NNN_PLUG='o:fzy-open;p:mocplay;d:ndiff;m:nmount;t:thumb'
   

   With this, plugin fzy-open can be run with the keybind xo, mocplay can be run with xp and so on... The key vs. plugin pairs are shown in the help and config screen. Up to 10 plugins can have such keybinds.

2. Use the pick plugin shortcut to visit the plugin directory and execute a plugin. Repeating the same shortcut cancels the operation and puts you back in the original directory.

Create your own plugins

Plugins are scripts and all scripting languages should work. However, POSIX-compliant shell scripts runnable in sh are preferred. If that’s too rudimentary for your use case, use Python, Perl or Ruby.

You can create your own plugins by putting them in ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-$HOME/.config}/nnn/plugins.

For example, you could create a executable shell script git-changes:

#!/usr/bin/env sh
git log -p -- "$@"

And then trigger it by hitting the pick plugin key and selecting git-changes which will conveniently show the git log of changes to the particular file along with the code for a quick and easy review.

Contributing plugins

Please keep non-portable commands (like notify-send) commented so users from any other OS/DE aren’t surprised.

The plugins should be executable. Please add an entry in the table above.