Feature request: delete history entries during Ctrl+R shell history search

[og900aero]

Checklist

• I have read through the manual page (man fzf)
• I have searched through the existing issues
• For bug reports, I have checked if the bug is reproducible in the latest version of fzf

Output of fzf --version

0.70.0 (eacef5e)

OS

• Linux
• macOS
• Windows
• Etc.

Shell

• bash
• zsh
• fish

Problem / Steps to reproduce

It would be great to have a built-in way to delete shell history entries directly from the Ctrl+R interactive search, without leaving the fzf interface.

Current behavior:
When using fzf for shell history search (Ctrl+R), there is no way to delete an entry from history. The user has to exit, manually find the line number via history, delete it with history -d <n>, and repeat — which is tedious, especially since line numbers shift after each deletion.

Desired behavior:
While browsing history with Ctrl+R, the user could press a key (e.g. Del or F8 or ) to delete the currently selected entry from history, and the list would refresh in place — similar to how hstr handles deletion, but integrated into the fzf Ctrl+R flow.

Why this is tricky:
The main challenge is that history -d only works in the current shell process. Actions triggered via --bind execute or execute-silent run in a subshell, so history modifications don't propagate back to the parent shell. A native fzf mechanism (e.g. a delete-history action) would be needed to work around this limitation cleanly.

Workaround:
A bash wrapper function using a while loop around fzf with --tac and --multi can approximate this behavior, but it requires exiting and re-entering fzf after each deletion round, which is not seamless.

A native solution in fzf would make it the definitive interactive history manager for shell users.

[junegunn]

I think we can implement it using exclude action. Let's use shift-delete key because it's already used by the fish version.

On shift-enter,

• execute-silent to queue the item for deletion
• exclude to hide the entry from the list

On exit,

• Sort the entries in the queue in the reverse order, and delete each entry with history -d.

[junegunn]

Related: #3522

[og900aero]

I use this simple code now (works only without histtime function):

histdel() {
  local selected
  selected=$(history | command fzf -m --tac --header "TAB: select | ENTER: delete" --preview "" --query "$*" | awk '{print $1}')
  
  if [[ -n "$selected" ]]; then
    while read -r line; do
      history -d "$line"
    done < <(echo "$selected" | sort -rn)
    
    history -w
    echo "Removed selected line(s)."
  fi
}

[junegunn]

Please test 76efddd.

[junegunn]

Also a00df93.

You can select multiple entries with TAB key and bulk-delete them with SHIFT-DELETE,

[og900aero]

Please test 76efddd.

when I select (with TAB) the last two command and press shift+delete and press ESC, get the error message:
bash: history: 590: history position out of range

When I checked the history, I saw delete only one command from history.

Maybe this is a classic "index shifting" issue in Bash. When you delete a line (e.g., index 589), Bash immediately re-indexes the subsequent lines. The original index 590 becomes the new 589. When the script then tries to delete the original index 590, it no longer exists, resulting in the "out of range" error.

Suggested fix:
The selected indices must be processed in descending order (from highest to lowest). This way, deleting a higher index doesn't shift the positions of the lower indices that are still queued for deletion.

[dcog989]

Hi. Am I missing something here? When I Shift-Delete, the selected item is deleted, but the entire fzf contents is also cleared - so I have to ESC and Ctrl-R again. Which is a bit painful if I want to delete multiple items.

[bitraid]

@dcog989 This should not be happening. Please open a new issue.

[dcog989]

@bitraid - thanks - #4841