dump-tabs.yazi

A small Yazi plugin that dumps all open tabs to a file.

It has two main use cases:

1. Human/debug dump: a table with tab index, active tab, name, cwd, and hovered path.
2. Restore dump: paths or a ready-to-run yazi ... command.

Warning

The code of this project is mainly LLM Generated, with basic manual audit, use it with caution.

Install

With Yazi's package manager:

ya pkg add js0ny/dump-tabs

With Home-Manager:

# manual install
{ pkgs, ... }: {
  programs.yazi.plugins = {
    dump-tabs = (
      pkgs.stdenvNoCC.mkDerivation {
        pname = "dump-tabs";
        version = "0ef7b5540f5eef0a2876ebd0d3e8dd24c4b143cb"; 
        src = pkgs.fetchFromGitHub {
          owner = "js0ny";
          repo = "dump-tabs.yazi";
          rev = "0ef7b5540f5eef0a2876ebd0d3e8dd24c4b143cb"; # replace with current commit hash
          hash = "sha256-EGQBHqz1nJJYRRMbotr6TeKg+rWdVzcpyi2ni7AdeCo="; # needs to recalculate
        };
        installPhase = ''
          runHook preInstall
          cp -r . $out
          runHook postInstall
        '';
      }
    );
  };
}
# with flake (if you wish)
# flake.nix
{
  inputs = {
    yazi-dump-tabs = {
      url = "github:js0ny/dump-tabs.yazi";
      inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
    };
  };
}
# home-manager
{
  programs.yazi.plugins = {
    dump-tabs = inputs.yazi-dump-tabs.packages.${pkgs.stdenv.hostPlatform.system}.default;
  };
}

Basic keymap

[[mgr.prepend_keymap]]
on = [ "<C-s>" ]
run = "plugin dump-tabs"
desc = "Dump all tabs to file"

Default output path:

~/.local/state/yazi/tabs.dump

Default format is table:

<index> <active-or-> <tab-name> <cwd> <hovered-url-or->

Example:

1 - home /home/user /home/user/.config
2 active project /home/user/project /home/user/project/src
3 - docs /home/user/docs /home/user/docs/notes

Fields in table format are backslash-escaped for readability:

• space -> \
• backslash -> \\
• tab -> \t
• carriage return -> \r
• newline -> \n

Restore-friendly formats

For reopening tabs, prefer one of these instead of parsing the default table.

format=cmd

Writes a ready-to-run shell command:

[[mgr.prepend_keymap]]
on = [ "<C-s>" ]
run = "plugin dump-tabs -- --format=cmd"
desc = "Dump tabs as yazi command"

Output:

yazi '/home/user/.config' '/home/user/project/src' '/home/user/docs/notes'

Run it with:

sh ~/.local/state/yazi/tabs.dump

or inspect first:

cat ~/.local/state/yazi/tabs.dump

format=nul

Writes NUL-separated paths for robust machine parsing:

[[mgr.prepend_keymap]]
on = [ "<C-s>" ]
run = "plugin dump-tabs -- --format=nul"
desc = "Dump tabs as NUL-separated paths"

Default output path for this mode:

~/.local/state/yazi/tabs.nul

Restore with:

xargs -0 yazi < ~/.local/state/yazi/tabs.nul

This is the safest format for paths containing spaces, quotes, or other shell metacharacters.

format=lines

Writes one path per line:

[[mgr.prepend_keymap]]
on = [ "<C-s>" ]
run = "plugin dump-tabs -- --format=lines"
desc = "Dump tabs as one path per line"

Restore only if your paths do not contain newlines:

xargs -d '\n' yazi < ~/.local/state/yazi/tabs.dump

Other options

Custom output path:

[[mgr.prepend_keymap]]
on = [ "<C-A-s>" ]
run = "plugin dump-tabs -- --format=cmd --output=/tmp/yazi-tabs.sh"
desc = "Dump all tabs to /tmp"

Custom separator for table format:

[[mgr.prepend_keymap]]
on = [ "<C-A-s>" ]
run = "plugin dump-tabs -- --format=table --sep=| --output=/tmp/yazi-tabs.dump"
desc = "Dump all tabs with pipe separator"

Debug mode:

[[mgr.prepend_keymap]]
on = [ "<C-S-s>" ]
run = "plugin dump-tabs -- --debug"
desc = "Dump all tabs with debug notifications"

Debug mode does three things:

1. Shows short notifications for each stage: start, collect, ensure output dir, write, done.
2. Writes messages with ya.dbg() to Yazi's log when Yazi is started with YAZI_LOG=debug.
3. Wraps collection errors with pcall() and reports them via ya.notify() / ya.err() instead of failing silently.

For logs, start Yazi like this:

YAZI_LOG=debug yazi

Then inspect:

~/.local/state/yazi/yazi.log

TODO

• Check availability on Windows & Update documentations