How to Create a Simple Terminal History Searcher

This guide shows how to build a simple terminal history search tool using fzf. You’ll learn how to pipe your shell history into an interactive fuzzy finder, filter commands as you type, and quickly select or re-run previous commands. By the end, you’ll have a small but powerful utility that makes navigating your command history significantly faster.

1. Install fzf if you don’t already have it

sudo apt install fzf

2. Open .bashrc in Your Favorit Editor and Past the Following

With this you’ll be able to fuzz search you terminal history, without any duplicates and execute it directly by pressing enter.
Change the \C-g to which ever shortcut you’d like, in my case I’ll go with ctrl + g.

fzf-history-run() {
  eval "$(
    history \
      | awk '!seen[substr($0,index($0,$2))]++' \
      | fzf --tac \
      | sed 's/^[ ]*[0-9]\+[ ]*//'
  )"
}

bind -x '"\C-g": fzf-history-run'

3. Open .bashrc again in Your Favorit Editor and Past the Following

With this you’ll be able to fuzz search you terminal history, without any duplicates, but instead of executing it directly it will be selected and you can edit the command before executing it.
Change the \C-e to which ever shortcut you’d like, in my case I’ll go with ctrl + e.

fzf-history-edit() {
  local cmd
  cmd=$(
    history \
      | awk '!seen[substr($0,index($0,$2))]++' \
      | fzf --tac \
      | sed 's/^[ ]*[0-9]\+[ ]*//'
  )

  READLINE_LINE="$cmd"
  READLINE_POINT=${#cmd}
}

bind -x '"\C-e": fzf-history-edit'

Congrats!! You have succesfully created a powerfull history searcher

// Miyarima