Plugins and the status barAliases and third-party plugins
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Module 8 · Lesson 28 min

Aliases and third-party plugins

A plugin alias is a short name that stands in for a location and configuration. The default config defines aliases for all the built-ins so layouts can say status-bar instead of the full zellij:status-bar URL. You can define your own aliases the same way in the plugins block of your config.

The default plugin aliases
plugins {
    tab-bar location="zellij:tab-bar"
    status-bar location="zellij:status-bar"
    strider location="zellij:strider"
    compact-bar location="zellij:compact-bar"
    session-manager location="zellij:session-manager"
    filepicker location="zellij:strider" { cwd "/" }
}

Third-party plugins are just WASM files, so you load them by any of the same location schemes: a file: path to a downloaded .wasm, or an http(s): URL. Drop it into a layout's plugin node (or define an alias for it) and it loads like any built-in. The community has plugins for richer status bars, harpoon-style pane jumping, and more.

Practice

Try it yourself

Recall

What an alias buys you

Small idea, worth stating.

What does a plugin alias let you write in a layout, and why keep the defaults?