In Operation
Press ctrl-r. This brings up a full-screen reverse history search.
The interface lists possible actions at the top. Use up and down arrows to scroll through the list of commands. Or you can use ctrl-p and ctrl-n. The selected command is run when you hit Return. You can edit a command before executing it by pressing Tab. You go back to the command prompt, ready to edit the command.
McFly has some useful subcommands including search, add, and move.
The software aims for the command you actually want to run to be one of the top suggestions. From my experience, it’s reasonably successful, although its algorithm could be refined.
Next page: Page 3 – Other Features
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / Installation
Page 2 – In Operation
Page 3 – Other Features
Page 4 – Summary
Complete list of articles in this series:
| Excellent Utilities | |
|---|---|
| Abricotine | Markdown editor with inline preview functionality |
| Ananicy | Shell daemon created to manage processes’ IO and CPU priorities |
| broot | Next gen tree explorer and customizable launcher |
| cheat.sh | Community driven unified cheat sheet |
| croc | Securely transfer files and folders from the command-line |
| Deskreen | Live streaming your desktop to a web browser |
| duf | Disk usage utility with more polished presentation than the classic df |
| exa | A turbo-charged alternative to the venerable ls command |
| Extension Manager | Browse, install and manage GNOME Shell Extensions |
| fd | Wonderful alternative to the venerable find |
| fkill | Kill processes quick and easy |
| fontpreview | Quickly search and preview fonts |
| horcrux | File splitter with encryption and redundancy |
| LanguageTool | Style and grammar checker for 30+ languages |
| Liquid Prompt | Adaptive prompt for Bash & Zsh |
| lnav | Advanced log file viewer for the small-scale; great for troubleshooting |
| lsd | Like exa, lsd is a turbo-charged alternative to ls |
| McFly | Navigate through your bash shell history |
| mdless | Formatted and highlighted view of Markdown files |
| OCRmyPDF | Add OCR text layer to scanned PDFs |
| Paperwork | Designed to simplify the management of your paperwork |
| PDF Mix Tool | Perform common editing operations on PDF files |
| peco | Simple interactive filtering tool that's remarkably useful |
| ripgrep | Recursively search directories for a regex pattern |
| scrcpy | Display and control Android devices |
| tldr | Simplified and community-driven man pages |
| tmux | A terminal multiplexer that offers a massive boost to your workflow |
| Tusk | An unofficial Evernote client with bags of potential |
| Ulauncher | Sublime application launcher |
| Watson | Track the time spent on projects |
| Whoogle Search | Self-hosted and privacy-focused metasearch engine |