Tridactyl

Replace Firefox's default control mechanism with one modelled on the one true editor, Vim.

Installation • Changelog • First Look • Features • FAQ • Contributing

Installation

Simply click this link in Firefox to install our latest "beta" build. If you want more options, read on.

Stable

Our "stable" builds are essentially just frozen versions of our beta builds. Our beta builds themselves are not much less stable; all our developers and about half of our users use the beta builds. Stable builds, however, do get new features documented in the changelog, whereas beta builds get new features before they are documented there.

Arch Linux

Run pacman -S firefox-tridactyl in a terminal and then restart Firefox twice.

All other operating systems (Microsoft Windows, Macintosh, Linux etc.)

Tridactyl stable can be installed from the Mozilla add-ons website (the AMO).

Beta

Click this in Firefox to install our "beta" builds. These betas are updated with each commit to master on this repo. Your browser will automatically update from there once a day. If you want more frequent updates, you can change extensions.update.interval in about:config to whatever time you want, say, 15 minutes (900 seconds). There is also another beta build that comes without a new tab page. You can get it from here.

Extra features

If you want to use advanced features such as edit-in-Vim, you'll also need to install the native messenger or executable, instructions for which can be found by typing :installnative and hitting enter once you are in Tridactyl. Arch users can install the AUR package firefox-tridactyl-native instead.

Migrating between beta and stable builds

Our beta and stable versions store their configurations in separate places. To migrate between the two, see the wiki.

Changelog

The changelog for the stable versions can be found here.

First look

Type :help or press <F1> for online help once you're in :)

Remember that Tridactyl cannot run on any page on about:*, data:*, view-source:* and file:*. We're sorry about that and we're working with Firefox to improve this situation by removing restrictions on existing APIs and developing a new API.

If you're enjoying Tridactyl, or not, please leave a review on the AMO.

Highlighted features

Like Vim, Tridactyl is modal, with the default mode being "normal mode". In "normal mode", many functions are available using keybindings. In "command mode" (when the command line is shown), you can execute more complex commands, known as "ex-commands". All Tridactyl functionality can be accessed by ex-commands. You can bind any ex-command to a normal-mode shortcut. We also support a .tridactylrc file, of which there is an example in the root of this repository.

Default normal-mode bindings

This is a (non-exhaustive) list of the most common normal-mode bindings. Type :help to open the online help for more details.

: — activate the command line
Shift + Insert — enter "ignore mode". Press Shift + Insert again to return to "normal mode".
ZZ — close all tabs and windows, but only "save" them if your about:preferences are set to "show your tabs and windows from last time"
. — repeat the last command
<C-v> – send a single keystroke to the current website, bypassing bindings

You can try :help key to know more about key. If it is an existing binding, it will take you to the help section of the command that will be executed when pressing key. For example :help . will take you to the help section of the repeat command.

Navigating with the current page

j/k — scroll down/up
h/l — scroll left/right
^/$ — scroll to left/right margin
gg/G — scroll to start/end of page
f/F/gF — enter "hint mode" to select a link to follow. F to open in a background tab (note: hint characters should be typed in lowercase). gF to repeatedly open links until you hit <Escape>.
gi — scroll to and focus the last-used input on the page
r/R — reload page or hard reload page
yy — copy the current page URL to the clipboard
[[/]] — navigate forward/backward though paginated pages, for example comics, multi-part articles, search result pages, etc.
]c/[c — increment/decrement the current URL by 1
gu — go to the parent of the current URL
gU — go to the root domain of the current URL
gr — open Firefox reader mode (note: Tridactyl will not work in this mode)
zi/zo/zz — zoom in/out/reset zoom
<C-f>/<C-b> — jump to the next/previous part of the page
g? — Apply Caesar cipher to page (run g? again to switch back)
g! — Jumble words on page

Find mode

Find mode is still incomplete and uses the Firefox feature "Quick Find". This will be improved eventually.

/ — open the find search box
<C-g>/<C-G> — find the next/previous instance of the last find operation (note: these are the standard Firefox shortcuts)

Please note that Tridactyl overrides Firefox's <C-f> search, replacing it with a binding to go to the next part of the page. If you want to be able to use <C-f> again to search for things, use unbind <C-f>.

Bookmarks and quickmarks

A — bookmark the current page
a — bookmark the current page, but allow the URL to be modified first
M<key> — bind a quickmark to the given key
go<key>/gn<key>/gw<key> — open a given quickmark in current tab/new tab/new window

If you want to use Firefox's default <C-b> binding to open the bookmarks sidebar, make sure to run unbind <C-b> because Tridactyl replaces this setting with one to go to the previous part of the page.

Navigating to new pages:

o/O — open a URL (or default search) in this tab (O to pre-load current URL)
t/T — open a URL (or default search) in a new tab (T to pre-load current URL)
w/W — open a URL (or default search) in a new window (W to pre-load current URL)
p/P — open the clipboard contents in the current/new tab
s/S — force a search using the default Tridactyl search engine, opening in the current/new tab. This is useful when searching for something that would otherwise be treated as a URL by o or t
H/L — go back/forward in the tab history
gh/gH — go to the pages you have set with set home [url1] [url2] ...

Handling tabs

d — close the current tab
u — undo the last tab/window closure
gt/gT — go to the next/previous tab
g^ OR g0/g$ — go to the first/last tab
<C-^> — go to the last active tab
b — bring up a list of open tabs in the current window; you can type the tab ID or part of the title or URL to choose a tab

Extended hint mode

Extended hint modes allow you to perform actions on page items:

;i/;I — open an image (in current/new tab)
;s/;a — save/save-as the linked resource
;S/;A — save/save-as the selected image
;p — copy an element's text to the clipboard
;P — copy an element's title/alt text to the clipboard
;y — copy an element's link URL to the clipboard
;# — copy an element's anchor URL to the clipboard
;r — read the element's text with text-to-speech
;k — delete an element from the page
;; — focus an element

Additionally, you can hint elements matching a custom CSS selector with :hint -c [selector] which is useful for site-specific versions of the standard f hint mode.

Binding custom commands

You can bind your own shortcuts in normal mode with the :bind command. For example :bind J tabprev to bind J to switch to the previous tab. See :help bind for details about this command.

WebExtension-related issues

Navigation to any about:* pages using :open requires the native messenger.
Firefox will not load Tridactyl on about:*, some file:* URIs, view-source:*, or data:*. On these pages <C-,> - that's "Ctrl-Comma" - and the tri omnibox keyword are your escape hatches.
- addons.mozilla.org is now supported so long as you run fixamo first.
Tridactyl now supports changing the Firefox GUI if you have the native messenger installed via guiset. There's quite a few options available, but guiset gui none is probably what you want, perhaps followed up with guiset tabs always. See :help guiset for a list of all possible options.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Why doesn't Tridactyl work/why does it break the websites I'm trying to use? or 'Help! A website I use is totally blank when I try to use it with Tridactyl enabled!' or 'Why doesn't Tridactyl work on some pages?'

Please visit our troubleshooting guide.
How can I change the search engine?

set searchengine duckduckgo
How can I add a search engine?

set searchurls.esa http://www.esa.int/esasearch?q=

You can also add %s to specify exactly where the search query should go, which is useful for more inventive uses, such as

set searchurls.phrasebook https://translate.google.co.uk/#en/%s/my%20hovercraft%20is%20full%20of%20eels

after which open phrasebook [fr|de|la|es|hi|it...] will work as expected.
Can I import/export settings, and does Tridactyl use an external configuration file just like Vimperator?

Yes. :source --url [URL] accepts a URL (which must contain only an RC file, e.g. raw.githubusercontent.com/...). If you have native working, $XDG_CONFIG_DIR/tridactyl/tridactylrc or ~/.tridactylrc will be read at startup via an autocmd and source. There is an example file available on our repository.

There's also mkt which exports your configuration to a file which may be read with source. (NB: this currently requires native).
How can I change the colors or theme used by Tridactyl?

Use :colors dark (authored by @furgerf), :colors shydactyl (authored by @atrnh) or :colors greenmat (authored by @caputchinefrobles). Tridactyl can also load themes from disk, which would let you use one of the themes authored by @bezmi (bezmi/base16-tridactyl), see :help colors for more information.
How to remap keybindings? or How can I bind keys using the control/alt key modifiers (eg: ctrl+^)?

You can remap keys in normal, ignore, input and insert mode with :bind --mode=$mode $key $excmd. Hint mode and the command line are currently special and can't be rebound. See :help bind for more information.

Modifiers can be bound like this: :bind <C-f> scrollpage 1. Special keys can be bound too: :bind <F3> colors dark and with modifiers: :bind <S-F3> colors default and with multiple modifiers: :bind <SA-F3> composite set hintchars 1234567890 | set hintfiltermode vimperator-reflow

The modifiers are case insensitive. Special key names are not. The names used are those reported by Javascript with a limited number of vim compatibility aliases (e.g. CR == Enter).

If you want to bind <C-^> you'll find that you'll probably need to press Control+Shift+6 to trigger it. The default bind is which does not require you to press shift.

You can also create site specific binds with bindurl [url] ...
When I type 'f', can I type link names (like Vimperator) in order to narrow down the number of highlighted links?

You can, thanks to @saulrh. First set hintfiltermode vimperator and then set hintchars 1234567890.
Where can I find a changelog for the different versions (to see what is new in the latest version)?

Here.
Why can't I use my bookmark keywords?

Mozilla doesn't give us access to them. See issue #73.
Can I set/get my bookmark tags from Tridactyl?

No, Mozilla doesn't give us access to them either.
Why doesn't Tridactyl work on websites with frames?

It should work on some frames now. See #122.
Can I change proxy via commands?

Not yet, but this feature will eventually be implemented.
How do I disable Tridactyl on certain sites?

You can use blacklistadd, like this: blacklistadd mail.google.com/mail. See :help blacklistadd. Also note that if you want something like the passkeys or ignorekeys features vimperator/pentadactyl had, you can use bindurl. See :help bindurl.
How can I list the current bindings?

viewconfig nmaps works OK, but Tridactyl commands won't work on the shown page for "security reasons". We'll eventually provide a better way. See #98.
How can I know which mode I'm in/have a status line?

Press j and see if you scroll down :) There's no status line yet: see #210, but we do have a "mode indicator" in the bottom right. It even goes purple when you're in a private window :).
Does anyone actually use Tridactyl?

In addition to the developers, some other people do. Mozilla keeps tabs on stable users here. The maintainers guess the number of unstable users from unique IPs downloading the betas each week when they feel like it. Last time they checked there were 4600 of them.
How do I prevent websites from stealing focus?

There are two ways to do that, the first one is set allowautofocus false (if you do this you'll probably also want to set browser.autofocus to false in about:config). This will prevent the page's focus() function from working and could break javascript text editors such as Ace or CodeMirror. Another solution is to use autocmd TabEnter .* unfocus in the beta, JS text editors should still work but pages won't steal focus when entering their tabs anymore.

Contributing

Donations

We gratefully accept donations via GitHub Sponsors (who will double any donations until October 2020), PayPal and Patreon. If you can, please make this a monthly donation as it makes it much easier to plan.

Funds will be used at the discretion of the main contributors (currently bovine3dom, cmcaine, glacambre and antonva) for Tridactyl-related expenditure, such as domain names, server costs, small thank-yous to contributors such as stickers, and victuals for hackathons.

Merchandise

We have some designs available on REDBUBBLE. There are often discount codes available - just search your favourite search engine for them. The T-shirts are quite good (I'm wearing one as I type this). The stickers are not the best quality we've ever seen. The clock looks amazing on the website. If anyone buys it I would love to see it.

We don't take any cut from the merchandise, so if you would like to donate, please do so via PayPal or Patreon above.

Building and installing

Onboarding:

git clone https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl.git
cd tridactyl
yarn install
yarn run build

Each time package.json or package-lock.json change after you checkout or pull, you should run yarn install again.

Addon is built in tridactyl/build. Load it as a temporary addon in firefox with about:debugging or see Development loop. The addon should work in Firefox 52+, but we're only deliberately supporting >=57.

If you want to install a local copy of the add-on into your developer or nightly build of firefox then you can enable installing unsigned add-ons and then build it like so:

# Build tridactyl if you haven't done that yet
yarn run build
# Package for a browser
"$(yarn bin)/web-ext" build -s build

If you want to build a signed copy (e.g. for the non-developer release), you can do that with web-ext sign. You'll need some keys for AMO and to edit the application id in src/manifest.json. There's a helper script in scripts/sign that's used by our build bot and for manual releases.

You can build unsigned copies with scripts/sign nosign{stable,beta}. NB: The stable versus beta part of the argument tells our build process which extension ID to use (and therefore which settings to use). If you want a stable build, make sure you are on the latest tag, i.e. git checkout $(git tag | grep '^[0-9]\+\.[0-9]\+\.[0-9]\+$' | sort -t. -k 1,1n -k 2,2n -k 3,3n | tail -1).

If you are on a distribution which builds Firefox with --with-unsigned-addon-scopes= set to app and/or system (which is most of them by users: Arch, Debian, Ubuntu), you can install your unsigned copy of Tridactyl with scripts/install.sh [directory]. If you're on Arch, the correct directory is probably selected by default; on other distributions you might have to go hunting, but it probably looks like /usr/lib/firefox/browser/extensions.

Building on Windows

Install Git for Windows
Install NodeJS for Windows
- Current 8.11.1 LTS seems to work fine
Launch the installation steps described above from MinTTY shell
- Also known as "Git Bash"

Development loop

yarn run build & yarn run run

You'll need to run yarn run build every time you edit the files, and press "r" in the yarn run run window to make sure that the files are properly reloaded.

Committing

A pre-commit hook is added by yarn install that simply runs yarn test. If you know that your commit doesn't break the tests you can commit with git commit -n to ignore the hooks. If you're making a PR, travis will check your build anyway.

Documentation

Ask in #tridactyl on matrix.org, freenode, or gitter. We're friendly!

Default keybindings are currently best discovered by reading the default config.

Development notes are in the doc directory, but they're mostly out of date now. Code is quite short and not too badly commented, though.

Principles and objectives

Principles:

Keyboard > mouse
default keybinds should be Vim-like
actions should be composable and repeatable
ex mode should expose all the browser functionality anyone might want
Arguable: most (all?) actions should have an ex mode version (departure from Vim?)
users can map and define their own actions and commands

Other objectives:

be fast - the whole point of a keyboard interface is to be more efficient, don't compromise that with slow code
don't crash - we're the new UI and we shouldn't crash
be maintainable - code should be well documented, reasoned about and tested.

Logo acknowledgement

The logo was designed by Jake Beazley using free vector art by www.Vecteezy.com

eh-am/tridactyl