lhistory

Cross-shell command history browser. See commands from all your terminal tabs, IDE terminals, and shell instances side by side in a multi-column TUI.

                          lhistory
 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  [Cursor] ~/projects/foo        ~/dotfiles
 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  14:23:01  make test             14:23:05  git pull
  14:22:58  git diff              14:22:30  vim ~/.zshrc
  14:22:45 !cargo build           14:21:12  brew update
  14:22:30  cd src                14:20:01  ls
 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  cargo build
  ↑↓/jk:navigate  ←→/hl:columns  /:search  Enter:select

Features

• Multi-column view — each shell session gets its own column, time-aligned
• Cross-shell — works with zsh, bash, and fish
• IDE-aware — detects Cursor, VS Code, Zed, and labels columns accordingly
• Non-blocking — commands recorded asynchronously via background subshell
• Fast — single 1.1MB binary with bundled SQLite, sub-millisecond recording
• Replaces up-arrow — press ↑ to browse history across all sessions

Install

Homebrew

brew install richardpenner/tap/lhistory

From source

git clone https://github.com/richardpenner/lhistory.git
cd lhistory
make
sudo make install

Then add to your shell:

lhistory install

Or manually add to your rc file:

# ~/.zshrc, ~/.bashrc, or ~/.config/fish/config.fish
eval "$(lhistory init zsh)"    # or bash, or fish

Usage

After installation, lhistory hooks into your shell automatically:

• Up arrow or Ctrl+R — open the history browser
• ↑↓ / j k — navigate commands
• ←→ / h l — switch between session columns
• / — search across all sessions
• Enter — select command and insert it at your prompt
• q / Esc — quit without selecting
• g / G — jump to top / bottom

Commands that exited non-zero are marked with !.

The current shell session always appears as the leftmost column.

How it works

lhistory installs shell hooks that record every command to a local SQLite database (~/.local/share/lhistory/history.db). Recording happens in a background subshell so your prompt is never delayed.

Each terminal tab, split pane, or IDE terminal panel gets a unique session ID (generated from PID, timestamp, and a random value). This means opening three tabs in iTerm, a split in tmux, and a terminal in Cursor gives you five separate sessions — each tracked independently with its own column in the TUI.

lhistory also detects where each session is running. It checks environment variables (TERM_PROGRAM, CURSOR_SESSION_ID, VSCODE_PID, ZED_TERM) and walks the process tree to identify the parent application. Column headers show the app name — so you can tell at a glance which commands ran in Cursor vs your regular terminal.

When you press up arrow, lhistory launches a TUI that queries the database and displays commands from all recent sessions in a multi-column layout aligned by time.

Requirements

• macOS or Linux
• C compiler (cc/gcc/clang)
• One of: zsh, bash, or fish

No external dependencies — SQLite is bundled.

License

MIT