How can I set up <j> and <k> to navigate up and down, and make <i> to focus on the search?

[wpsnapper]

I've been enjoying fzf.lua and it's working really good for me. However, I can't replicate what I had with telescope. In telescope I used buttons to go up and down and when I need to focus on the search again I'd press and I can search again. I press and move back and forth again if I want.

I added the following code, but it doesn't let me focus back on the search input or type a name containing those two letters ('jk').

require('fzf-lua').setup({
  keymap = {
    fzf = {
      true,
      ["h"] = "abort",
      ["j"] = "down",
      ["k"] = "up",
      ["l"] = "accept",
    },
  }
})

Is this possible to do with fzf.lua in anther way?

[ibhagwan]

The below sets this up to use i for the fake "insert" mode and esc to go back to the fake "normal" mode:

For more info, see man fzf for understaning bind|unbind

require('fzf-lua').setup({
  keymap = {
    fzf = {
      true,
      ["h"] = "abort",
      ["j"] = "down",
      ["k"] = "up",
      ["l"] = "accept",
      ["i"] = "unbind(h)+unbind(j)+unbind(k)+unbind(l)+unbind(i)",
      ["esc"] = "rebind(h)+rebind(j)+rebind(k)+rebind(l)+rebind(i)",
    },
  }
})

[wpsnapper]

Thanks for getting back to me! For some reason, adding those keystrokes made my fzf feel sluggish. I think I'll just revert it for now and stick to using and for down and up.

I think people would really appreciate it if you added this feature natively—it makes navigation so much smoother without having to move your fingers off the keys. That said, I’ll keep using fzf.lua even without it because it’s just so snappy with large codebases. People like you make the world a better place—thanks for all your work!

[ibhagwan]

Thanks for getting back to me! For some reason, adding those keystrokes made my fzf feel sluggish. I think I'll just revert it for now and stick to using and for down and up.

Shouldn’t happen, these are all native fzf keybinds (happening in the term, unrelated to fzf-lua), if you can easily reproduce and demonstrate it would be worthwhile to open an issue upstream.

I think people would really appreciate it if you added this feature natively—it makes navigation so much smoother without having to move your fingers off the keys. That said, I’ll keep using fzf.lua even without it because it’s just so snappy with large codebases. People like you make the world a better place—thanks for all your work!

I beg to differ, that’s a personal preference, in 2+ years of this plugin existed the “normal” mode request came up only a few times (and not necessarily for hjkl navigation), in addition, this would be better served in the upstream but the maintainer is against that: junegunn/fzf#384 (comment).

If you wish to keep your hands on the home row why don’t you set the same binds with ctrl- prefix? I personally use ctrl-jk for up|down:

require('fzf-lua').setup({
  keymap = {
    fzf = {
      true,
      ["ctrl-h"] = "abort",
      ["ctrl-j"] = "down",
      ["ctrl-k"] = "up",
      ["ctrl-l"] = "accept",
    },
  }
})

[ibhagwan]

FYI, after the latest commit 12ac915 you can do the below and keep your esc as double purpose to abort from "normal" mode, this also changes the prompt info (e.g. "Files") to be displayed in the title since we lose the prompt:

require('fzf-lua').setup({
  "default-title", -- Important as we lose the prompt
  keymap = {
    fzf = {
      true,
      ["h"] = "abort",
      ["j"] = "down",
      ["k"] = "up",
      ["l"] = "accept",
      ["i"] = "unbind(h)+unbind(j)+unbind(k)+unbind(l)+unbind(i)+change-prompt(> )",
      ["esc"] = 'transform:case "$FZF_PROMPT" in\n'
          .. '*NORMAL*) echo abort;;\n'
          .. '*) echo "change-prompt(NORMAL - PRESS \'I\' FOR INSERT MODE)'
          .. '+rebind(h)+rebind(j)+rebind(k)+rebind(l)+rebind(i)";;'
          .. '\nesac',
      ["start"] = "change-prompt(NORMAL - PRESS 'I' FOR INSERT MODE)"
    },
  }
})

[wpsnapper]

Thank you so much. I will try this one.

[ibhagwan]

Thank you so much. I will try this one.

Let me know what you think after you try it out for a while, if this is an acceptable workaround I might add a new profile with it maybe we call it telescope+normal?

[MoulyT]

Hi! Thanks for taking the time to work on this mode - really appreciate the effort!

I've been testing the configuration but unfortunately ran into an issue with escape sequences. I have both insert mode (jj/jk to ) and terminal mode (jj/jk to <C->) mappings through better-escape, and I noticed that when these sequences trigger, the cursor escapes fzf's control, just moving through characters without triggering fzf navigation.

I did some testing and found this isn't specific to better-escape - it happens the same way with traditional vim mappings. Either the insert mode or terminal mode escape sequence is enough to cause this behavior.

Hope this helps somehow,
Thanks for considering this and for all your amazing work on fzf-lua!

[ibhagwan]

I've been testing the configuration but unfortunately ran into an issue with escape sequences. I have both insert mode (jj/jk to ) and terminal mode (jj/jk to ) mappings through better-escape, and I noticed that when these sequences trigger, the cursor escapes fzf's control, just moving through characters without triggering fzf navigation.

I did some testing and found this isn't specific to better-escape - it happens the same way with traditional vim mappings. Either the insert mode or terminal mode escape sequence is enough to cause this behavior.

That's because these mappings I provided are mapped in fzf (terminal) while the better-escape mappings are neovim window mappings which then override the fzf mappings as the keys never get to the shell, to solve this you'd need to make an exclusion for better-escape to not set the mappings when filetype=fzf.

Alternatively, you can probably use the on_create event to "unmap" jj|jk yourself.