lnks

Triage your Google Chrome / Safari links from the terminal on MacOS.

Installation

Note

lnks source code can be found in src/main.sh.

Git Clone

Clone this repository, cd into the cloned directory, make the lnks binary file executable, and move it to your preferred location.

$ git clone https://github.com/unforswearing/lnks.git lnks
$ cd lnks
$ chmod +x lnks
$ sudo cp lnks /usr/local/bin

Adding lnks to Your Dotfiles

Instead of using the lnks binary, you may create an alias or function that calls src/main.sh and add it to your shell startup files (like .zshrc).

alias lnks='bash $filepath/lnks/src/main.sh'

function lnks() {
    bash "$filepath/lnks/src/main.sh" "${@}"
}

Eget

You can also install the v2 release using eget:

$ eget unforswearing/lnks
$ sudo cp lnks /usr/local/bin

Dependencies

Standard command line utilities: awk, curl, grep, sed, etc.

Note

These are the default BSD-based tools installed with MacOS, and not the equivalent Linux / GNU tools.

Usage

Usage: lnks [query] <options>

Options
  -h, --help  prints this help message
  --safari    search for urls in Safari instead of Google Chrome
  --print     print urls to stdout
  --stdin     read new-line-separated urls from stdin for use with other options
  --markdown  print markdown formatted urls to stdout
  --html      print html formatted list of urls to stdout
  --csv       print csv formatted urls to stdout

Examples

Note

Queries use awk and will accept keywords and regular expressions as input.

Important

Queries are currently case-sensitive. Case sensitivity will be removed in future versions of lnks.

Print urls matching from Google Chrome

lnks [query]
lnks [query] --print

Use Safari instead of Google Chrome:

If the --safari flag follows query, search Safari URLs instead of Chrome. This option can be set permanently in settings.

lnks [query] --safari --csv

Read urls from files or other commands

Use the --stdin flag to read urls from standard input.

cat urls.txt | lnks --stdin --csv

Processing options

lnks [query] --markdown
lnks [query] --html
lnks [query] --csv

lnks [query] --stdin [ --markdown | --html | --csv ]

Configuration File

lnks stores default values for some options and other behind-the-scenes details in the lnks.rc configuration file located at "$HOME"/.config/lnks/lnks.rc.

Current options:

• Default Browser
  • Options: Chrome | Safari
  • Default: Chrome

More options to come in the future.

To Do / Roadmap

After some years of neglect, lnks has been rewritten for version 2. This version is a stripped-down iteration of the script that removes redundant options (--copy, --save) and external (web/API-based) services (--instapaper, --pinboard). The --pdf option was also removed as wkhtmltopdf is currently unmaintained, and lnks is best at reformatting urls not pdf generation. You may find an older (possibly non-functional) version of lnks with these features in the v1 directory.

Please see todo.md for a full list of changes for version 2, and a list of features for version 3.