lsd

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[!IMPORTANT] This is the documentation for the development version of lsd. Please consult the documentation on the Tags page if you are looking for the documentation of individual releases.

The current newest release is: v1.2.0

LSD (LSDeluxe)

This project is a rewrite of GNU ls with lots of added features like colors, icons, tree-view, more formatting options etc. The project is heavily inspired by the super colorls project.

Installation

Prerequisites

[!TIP] Have a look at the Nerd Font README for help with installing Nerd Fonts

1. In order for icons to work you need to have a patched font like nerd-font or font-awesome installed on your machine and your terminal needs to be configured to use the patched font of your choosing.
2. If you intend to install lsd from source you need to have a working Rust toolchain (obviously) on your machine.

Installing with a package manager

Packaging status

Please consult the table below for the installation command associated with your package manager.

OS/Distro Command Archlinux pacman -S lsd Fedora dnf install lsd Gentoo sudo emerge sys-apps/lsd macOS brew install lsd or sudo port install lsd Nix (non NixOS) nix-env -iA nixpkgs.lsd NixOS Add environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.lsd ]; to your system config FreeBSD pkg install lsd NetBSD or any pkgsrc platform pkgin install lsd or cd /usr/pkgsrc/sysutils/lsd && make install OpenBSD pkg_add lsd Windows scoop install lsd or winget install --id lsd-rs.lsd or choco install lsd Android (via Termux) pkg install lsd Debian sid and bookworm apt install lsd Ubuntu 23.04 (Lunar Lobster) apt install lsd Earlier Ubuntu/Debian versions snap discontinued, use the method described here instead Solus eopkg it lsd Void Linux sudo xbps-install lsd openSUSE sudo zypper install lsd

Installing from source

With Rust's package manager cargo, you can install lsd via:

cargo install lsd

And if you want to install the latest main branch commit you can do so via:

cargo install --git https://github.com/lsd-rs/lsd.git --branch main

Installing binaries directly

The release page includes precompiled binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows for every release. You can also get the latest binary of the main branch from the GitHub action build artifacts (choose the top action and then scroll down to the artifacts section).

Configuring your shell to use lsd instead of ls (optional)

In order to use lsd instead of entering the ls command, you need to create an alias for ls in to your shell configuration file (~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, etc...). The simplest variant of such an alias is:

alias ls='lsd'

The alias above will replace a stock ls command with an lsd command without additional parameters.

Some examples of other useful aliases are:

alias l='lsd -l'
alias la='lsd -a'
alias lla='lsd -la'
alias lt='lsd --tree'

Customizing lsd (configuration and theming)

[!TIP] In order to make the customization process easier for you we’ve supplied sample files. These files contain the entries for all the defaults that lsd comes with after installation. You can find the sample files in the documentation folder.

We've also supplied a color reference where we’ve documented the default colors lsd uses in its output. You can also preview there.

In order to tailor lsd to your specific needs you can create any of the following three files and make adjustments as you see fit.

1. config.yaml → config sample file here
2. colors.yaml → colors sample file here
3. icons.yaml → icons sample file here

Note that it is not required to have all three of the files present in order for your configuration to be applied. For example, if you only want to customize the icons then only icons.yaml needs to be present in the configuration directory; config.yaml, and colors.yaml do not have to be present in order for your icon modifications to be applied.

Config file locations

[!TIP] You can also instruct lsd to look for configuration files in a custom location of your choosing by using the following command: lsd --config-file [YOUR_CUSTOM_PATH]. This is particularly useful when testing a configuration changes before committing to them.

Unix (Linux, Mac, etc...)

On non-Windows systems lsd follows the XDG Base Directory Specification, thus lsd will look for configuration files any of the following locations:

• $HOME/.config/lsd
• $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/lsd

On most systems these variables are mapped to the same location, which is usually ~/.config/lsd/. If lsd does not detect the location, or if the location exists but does not contain any of the three configuration files, the default configuration will be used instead.

Windows

On Windows systems lsd will look for configuration files in the following locations, in order:

1. %USERPROFILE%\.config\lsd
2. %APPDATA%\lsd

These locations are usually something like C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\lsd\, and C:\Users\username\.config\lsd\ respectively.

Quick customization example

For this example let's assume you're already content lsd, but there are a few of the default icons that really bug you and you want to change them to something that suits your needs better. All you have to do is create an icons.yaml file in the configuration directory and configure your custom icon there. Here’s how.

There are 3 kinds of icon overrides available in lsd:

• name
• filetype
• extension

Both nerd font glyphs and Unicode emojis can be used for icons. The final set of icons that lsd will use is a combination of the default icons with the custom icons you’ve set in the icons.yaml file.

[!NOTE] Aside from the icon sample file, you can also find the default icon set in the source code here.

A short example for each type of the icon overrides is shown below.

name:
  .trash: 
  .cargo: 
  .emacs.d: 
  a.out: 
extension:
  go: 
  hs: 
  rs: 🦀
filetype:
  dir: 📂
  file: 📄
  pipe: 📩
  socket: 󰆨
  executable: 
  symlink-dir: 
  symlink-file: 
  device-char: 
  device-block: 󰜫
  special: 

F.A.Q and troubleshooting

How can I enable nerd fonts using xresources?

To enable nerd fonts for your terminal, URxvt for example, in .Xresources take a look at the example below:

URxvt*font:    xft:Hack Nerd Font:style=Regular:size=11

Why am I seeing Uses unknown compression for member ‘control.tar.zst' when using deb?

Zst compression is only supported from Debian 12, Ubuntu 21.10, and upward. Starting from lsd v1.1.0 please use the _xz.deb release instead. See this issue for additional details and manual fixes.

How can I set custom color schemes for Windows?

In order to display a custom color scheme lsd reads a system environment variable called LS_COLORS. If your custom color scheme is not working LS_COLORS is most likely missing. Please look at the marked solution in this post, which contains instructions on how to set a custom color scheme on Windows for guidance.

Why are icons not showing up

[!IMPORTANT] Always check if the font you are using is correctly set up! Run the following snippet in your terminal emulator and verify that the output prints a folder icon. If it prints a box, or question mark, or something else, then you might have some issues in how you set up the font or how your terminal emulator renders the font.

echo $'\uf115'

For lsd to be able to display icons the font has to include special font glyphs. If icons are not being displayed it could be the case that your current font does not include such glyphs. Thankfully, you can patch most fonts using NerdFont and add these icons to your current font.

Alternatively, you can also download an already patched version of your favorite font from the NerdFont font download page.

Here is a guide on how to set up fonts on macOS, and on Android.

Why are Icons missing or not rendering correctly using PuTTY/KiTTY on Windows?

First of all, make sure a patched font is available on your local machine and that PuTTY/KiTTY is configured to use that font. If you are not certain what this entails please read the Prerequisites.

Please note that there are problems for PuTTY/KiTTY displaying 2 character wide icons which may be the case for the font you configured. To ensure only 1 charact