Atuin Bar

Spotlight-like overlay interface for atuin shell history search.

Overview

Atuin Bar provides a macOS Spotlight-style keyboard shortcut and overlay window for quickly searching your shell history using atuin. Press a global hotkey, type to search, and select commands to copy to clipboard.

Features

• Global keyboard shortcut to show/hide search overlay (configurable)
• Spotlight-like UI with center-screen overlay
• Real-time search through atuin history
• Keyboard navigation (arrow keys, Enter, Escape)
• Automatic clipboard copy on selection

Configuration

The app can be configured in two ways:

1. Settings Menu (Recommended)

Click on the Atuin-Bar menu and select Settings to open a graphical configuration window. This allows you to:

• Change the global keyboard shortcut (requires restart)
• Toggle between dark and light themes
• Adjust the maximum number of search results displayed
• Customize the window width

Changes to theme, max results, and window width take effect immediately. Shortcut changes require an app restart.

2. Configuration File

The app uses a configuration file at ~/.config/atuin-bar/config.toml. On first run, a default config file is created automatically. You can also edit this file directly:

# Global shortcut to toggle the window
# Examples: "CommandOrControl+Shift+Space", "Alt+Space", "Super+H"
shortcut = "CommandOrControl+Shift+Space"

# Theme: "dark" or "light" (default: "dark")
theme = "dark"

# Maximum number of results to display (default: 20)
max_results = 20

# Window width in pixels (default: 700)
window_width = 700

Note: The Settings menu and config file are synchronized - changes made in either location will be reflected in both.

Build Configuration

Dependencies

Rust:

• Tauri 2.x
• serde & serde_json for serialization
• tauri-plugin-global-shortcut for hotkey support
• tauri-plugin-opener for system integration

Frontend:

• TypeScript
• Vite for bundling
• Tauri API libraries

Build Profiles

The release profile is optimized for small binary size:

• opt-level = "z" - Maximum size optimization
• lto = true - Link-time optimization enabled
• codegen-units = 1 - Single codegen unit for better optimization
• panic = "abort" - Smaller panic handler
• strip = true - Strip debug symbols

Building

Development:

npm install
npm run tauri dev

Release:

npm run tauri build

The release build will create optimized binaries in src-tauri/target/release/bundle/.

Platform Support

• Primary: macOS (10.13+)
• Secondary: Linux (optional, requires GTK3 development libraries)

macOS Private API

The app uses macos-private-api feature for better overlay window behavior on macOS. This enables proper window level management for the overlay effect.

Development

Prerequisites

• Rust (via rustup)
• Node.js & npm
• On Linux: GTK3 development libraries (libgtk-3-dev, libwebkit2gtk-4.0-dev)

Recommended IDE Setup

• VS Code
• Tauri VS Code Extension
• rust-analyzer

License

MIT OR Apache-2.0