iterfzf: Pythonic interface to fzf

Demo session

See also the API reference.

Key features

• No dependency but only Python is required. Prebuilt fzf binary for each platform is bundled into wheels. Everything is ready by pip install iterfzf. (Note that not wheels of all supported platforms are uploaded to PyPI as they don't allow minor platforms e.g. FreeBSD. The complete wheels can be found from the GitHub releases.)
• Consumes an iterable rather than a list. It makes UX way better when the input data is long but streamed from low latency network. It can begin to display items immediately after only part of items are ready, and before the complete items are ready.
• Supports Python 3.8 or higher.

iterfzf.iterfzf(iterable, *, **options)

Consumes the given iterable of strings, and displays them using fzf. If a user chooses something it immediately returns the chosen things. If the user cancels the selection, the KeywordInterrupt exception will be raised.

The following is the full list of parameters. Pass them as keyword arguments except for iterable which comes first:

iterable (required)

The only required parameter. Every element which this iterable yields is displayed immediately after each one is produced. In other words, the passed iterable is lazily consumed.

It can be an iterable of byte strings (e.g. [b'foo', b'bar']) or of Unicode strings (e.g. [u'foo', u'bar']), but must not be mixed (e.g. [u'foo', b'bar']). If they are byte strings the function returns bytes. If they are Unicode strings it returns Unicode strings. See also the encoding parameter.

Keyword arguments

Keyword	Default	CLI option	Description
ansi	None	--ansi	True to enable ansi colors mode. New in version 1.0.0.
bind		--bind	The key/event bindings to pass to fzf. Dictionary of the form {KEY: ACTION} or {EVENT: ACTION}. New in version 1.4.0.
case_sensitive	None	--smart-case	True for case sensitivity, and False for case insensitivity. None, the default, for smart-case match. True corresponds to +i option and False corresponds to -i option.
color	None	--color	Accepts color scheme name or a dictionary in the form of {element: color}. New in version 1.6.0.
cycle	False	--cycle	True to enable cycling scrolling. New in version 1.1.0.
encoding	sys.getdefaultencoding()	--encoding	The text encoding name (e.g. 'utf-8', 'ascii') to be used for encoding iterable values and decoding return values. It's ignored when the iterable values are byte strings.
exact	False	--exact	False for fuzzy matching, and True for exact matching.
extended	True	--extended --no-extended	True for extended-search mode. False to turn it off. True corresponds to -x/--extended option, and False corresponds to +x/--no-extended option.
header	None	--header	Sticky header printed below prompt. New in version 1.6.0.
mouse	True	--no-mouse	False to disable mouse.
multi	False	--multi	True to let the user to choose more than one. A user can select items with tab/shift-tab. If multi=True the function returns a list of strings rather than a string. False to make a user possible to choose only one. If multi=False it returns a string rather than a list. For both modes, the function returns None if nothing is matched.
preview	None	--preview	New in version 0.5.0.
print_query	False	--print-query	If True the return type is a tuple where the first element is the query the user actually typed, and the second element is the selected output as described above and depending on the state of multi. New in version 0.3.0.
prompt	" >"	--prompt
query	"" (empty string)	--query	The query string to be filled at first. (It can be removed by a user.)
sort	False	--sort	Sorts the result if True. False by default. New in version 1.3.0.
__extra__	[]		The iterable of extra raw options/arguments to pass to fzf. This is how you pass extra options that are not already defined as keyword arguments. New in version 1.1.0.

Author and license

The iterfzf library is written by Hong Minhee and distributed under GPLv3 or later.

The fzf program is written by Junegunn Choi and distributed under MIT license.

Changelog

Versioning scheme

Note that iterfzf does not follow Semantic Versioning. The version consists of its own major and minor number followed by the version of bundled fzf. For example, 1.2.3.4.5 means that iterfzf's own major version is 1, and its own minor version is 2, plus the version of fzf it bundles is 3.4.5.

/---------- 1. iterfzf's major version
|   /------ 3. bundled fzf's major version
|   |   /-- 5. bundled fzf's patch version
|   |   |
v   v   v
1.2.3.4.5
  ^   ^
  |   |
  |   \---- 4. bundled fzf's minor version
  \-------- 2. iterfzf's minor version

Version 1.7.0.60.3

To be released. Bundles fzf 0.60.3.

Version 1.6.0.60.3

Released on March 11, 2025. Bundles fzf 0.60.3.

• Added header option. [#42 by Phred Lane]
• Added color option. [#43 by Phred Lane]

Version 1.5.0.60.2

Released on March 5, 2025. Bundles fzf 0.60.2.

• Added support for raising KeyboardInterrupt. [#40 by Phred Lane]
• Officially support Python 3.13.

Version 1.4.0.60.2

Released on March 1, 2025. Bundles fzf 0.60.2.

Version 1.4.0.54.3

Released on August 24, 2024. Bundles fzf 0.54.3.

Version 1.4.0.51.0

Released on May 7, 2024. Bundles fzf 0.51.0.

• Added bind option. [#21, #36 by Gregory.K]

Version 1.3.0.51.0

Released on May 6, 2024. Bundles fzf 0.51.0.

• Added sort option. [#18, #35 by Gregory.K]
• Officially support Python 3.12.

Version 1.2.0.46.1

Released on March 6, 2024. Bundles fzf 0.46.1.

• Close stdin before waiting to allow --select-1 to work. [#34 by Alex Wood]

Version 1.1.0.44.0

Released on November 18, 2023. Bundles fzf 0.44.0.

• Added cycle option. [#33 by Daniele Trifirò]
• Added __extra__ option. [#32]

Version 1.0.0.42.0

Released on September 18, 2023. Bundles fzf 0.42.0.

• Dropped Python 2.7, 3.5, 3.6, and 3.7 supports.
• Officially support Python 3.8, 3.9, 3.10, and 3.11.
• Dropped FreeBSD i386, Linux i686, Linux armv8l, OpenBSD i386, and Windows 32-bit supports as fzf no longer supports them.
• Dropped OpenBSD amd64 support.
• Except the first parameter iterable, all parameters are enforced to be keyword-only. (Note that it's always been the recommended way to pass options, although it was not enforced.)
• Added ansi option. [#16 by Erik Lilja]
• The executable parameter now takes os.PathLike instead of str, which is backward compatible.
• Added __version__ and __fzf_version__ attributes to the module.
• Added POSIX_EXECUTABLE_NAME and WINDOWS_EXECUTABLE_NAME attributes to the module.
• Module attribute EXECUTABLE_NAME is now a Literal['fzf', 'fzf.exe'] type, which is backward compatible with the previous str type.
• Module attribute BUNDLED_EXECUTABLE is now Optional[pathlib.Path] type.

Version 0.5.0.20.0

Released on February 9, 2020. Bundles fzf 0.20.0.

• Dropped Python 2.6, 3.3, and 3.4 supports.
• Officially support Python 3.7 (it anyway had worked though).
• Marked the package as supporting type checking by following PEP 561.
• Added preview option. [#6 by Marc Weistroff]
• Fixed a bug which had raised IOError by selecting an option before finished to load all options on Windows. [#3 by Jeff Rimko]

Version 0.4.0.17.3

Released on December 4, 2017. Bundles fzf 0.17.3.

Version 0.4.0.17.1

Released on October 19, 2017. Bundles fzf 0.17.1.

• Added missing binary wheels for macOS again. (These were missing from 0.3.0.17.1, the previous release.)

Version 0.3.0.17.1

Released on October 16, 2017. Bundles fzf 0.17.1.

• Added print_query option. [#1 by George Kettleborough]

Version 0.2.0.17.0

Released on August 27, 2017. Bundles fzf 0.17.0.

Version 0.2.0.16.11

Released on July 23, 2017. Bundles fzf 0.16.11.

Version 0.2.0.16.10

Released on July 23, 2017. Bundles fzf 0.16.10.

Version 0.2.0.16.8

Released on June 6, 2017. Bundles fzf 0.16.8.

• Upgraded fzf from 0.16.7 to 0.16.8.

Version 0.2.0.16.7

Released on May 20, 2017. Bundles fzf 0.16.7.

• Made sdists (source distributions) possible to be correctly installed so that older pip, can't deal with wheels, also can install iterfzf.

Version 0.1.0.16.7

Released on May 19, 2017. Bundles fzf 0.16.7. The initial release.