Configuration Variables

These variables are exported from config.fish on every interactive session. Override them in local.fish (see Section 10, Personalization).

Environment Directories (XDG)

Tool Homes (XDG-compliant)

Editor and Pager

Scrollback History

Colour Output (NO_COLOR)

Other

Startup Cache

Pager Hierarchy

Integrations

Environment Directories (XDG)

Variable	Value
XDG_CONFIG_HOME	~/.config
XDG_CACHE_HOME	~/.cache
XDG_DATA_HOME	~/.local/share
XDG_STATE_HOME	~/.local/state

Tools that respect XDG are directed to these paths rather than polluting $HOME.

Tool Homes (XDG-compliant)

Variable	Value
CARGO_HOME	$XDG_DATA_HOME/cargo
RUSTUP_HOME	$XDG_DATA_HOME/rustup
GOPATH	$XDG_DATA_HOME/go
BUN_INSTALL	$XDG_DATA_HOME/bun
NPM_CONFIG_PREFIX	$XDG_DATA_HOME/npm-global
GNUPGHOME	$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/gnupg
WAKATIME_HOME	$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/wakatime

Editor and Pager

Variable	Value / Notes
EDITOR	nvim (falls back to vi if nvim is absent)
VISUAL	unset by default; set a GUI editor via local.fish (the edit function falls back to a GUI chain when VISUAL is empty)
SUDO_EDITOR	same as EDITOR
PAGER	ov (falls back to less)

Scrollback History

Variable	Value / Notes
__fish_scrollback_history_dir	(unset → ~/.terminal_history)
__fish_scrollback_history_max_files	(unset → 100)
SCROLLBACK_HISTORY_DIR	~/.terminal_history (exported mirror)
SCROLLBACK_HISTORY_MAX_FILES	100 (exported mirror)

The __fish_scrollback_history_* universal variables are the fish-style source of truth — set them via config-settings → Paths, or set -U directly. config.fish exports the SCROLLBACK_HISTORY_* mirrors from them, because the POSIX wrapper scripts (paru/yay/tmux/zellij logging and _prune_terminal_logs) read the exported names from the environment. When the __fish_ vars are unset, the documented defaults are exported. config.fish deliberately does not create a global source var, which would shadow the universal and stop live edits from taking effect.

Scrollback logs accumulate in SCROLLBACK_HISTORY_DIR as timestamped files. When the count exceeds SCROLLBACK_HISTORY_MAX_FILES the oldest are pruned automatically on exit. Use logs to browse them interactively.

The directory is kept private: created 700, with the log files 600, regardless of umask. A looser existing directory is tightened silently on its next use. See the C5 reference in Section 8.

Colour Output (NO_COLOR)

Variable	Value / Notes
NO_COLOR	unset by default. Set to any non-empty value (1, true, …) to turn colour off in this configuration’s own command output; an empty value does not count

NO_COLOR follows the convention at no-color.org. With it set, the shared output palette (__fish_palette) hands every function empty colour roles, and the functions that colour their output directly (through __fish_color, a NO_COLOR-aware set_color) print no escape sequences either. That covers --help text, errors and warnings, fish-deps status, config-help, gi, scrub and the rest of the user-facing functions. The status marks become words, since without colour a ✔ and a ✘ are easy to confuse and a screen reader or grep cannot tell them apart: ✔/✓ print as [ok], ✘/✗ as [error] and ⚠ as [warn].

The config-settings interface switches to its mono style: no colour, with the selected row in reverse video. Its values are always spelled out (ON, OFF, DEFAULT), so nothing is lost. A contrast style is also available for low-contrast terminals or low vision: it keeps the colours, replaces the dim grey and blue with white, and bolds every line. Pick one explicitly with config-settings --style color|mono|contrast, which takes precedence over NO_COLOR.

What it does not change: your prompt and theme, fish’s syntax highlighting (the fish_color_* variables), the vendored fzf, autopair, done and puffer plugins, and the output of external tools that colour themselves. Export it from your environment, or put set -gx NO_COLOR 1 in local.fish, to apply it everywhere.

Other

Variable	Value	Notes
GPG_TTY	$(tty)	ensures GPG passphrase prompts work; interactive shells with a tty only
CLAUDE_CODE_NO_FLICKER	1	suppress terminal flicker in Claude Code (C3 overrides)
CDPATH	. ~/projects ~

Opinionated defaults (CDPATH, PAGER/MANPAGER, Vi mode, command shadows, terminal integrations) can be switched off per category with universal variables — see Section 7, “Opinionated Components (Minimal Mode)”.

Startup Cache

Variable	Value	Notes
__fish_config_init_cache	unset (on)	set to off/0/false to stop caching the fzf --fish and direnv hook fish init output

Entries live in $XDG_CACHE_HOME/fish-config/init/ and are invalidated when the tool binary changes. __fish_init_cache --clear removes them. See Section 13, Troubleshooting.

Pager Hierarchy

$PAGER is set to ov when available, falling back to less. The less wrapper function extends this into a full chain so anything that calls less directly also benefits:

$PAGER → ov → less → more → cat

When bat is installed, man pages are rendered with syntax highlighting:

Variable	Value
MANROFFOPT	-c
MANPAGER	sh -c 'col -bx | bat -l man -p'

Integrations

Zoxide

cd, z, and cdi/zi are all mapped to zoxide-backed navigation. Tab completions for cd and z blend standard directory entries (CWD and CDPATH) with frecency results so both familiar and frequently-visited paths appear in one list.

DirEnv

Automatically loads .envrc files on directory change. Takes priority over the auto-venv logic — if a directory is managed by direnv, the auto-venv activation is skipped entirely.

Auto Python Venv

When entering a directory that contains a .venv/, the virtualenv is activated automatically and deactivated when you leave the project tree.

WakaTime

Every shell command is reported to WakaTime for time-tracking, but only when the wakatime CLI (on $PATH, or ~/.wakatime/wakatime-cli) is found. It is looked up once; with no CLI the hook is never registered and costs nothing.

For each command the hook sends two things: the first word of the command line (for example git, never its arguments) as the entity, and a project name. Inside a git repository the project is the repository directory name; elsewhere it is Terminal.

Opt-outs:

FISH_WAKATIME_DISABLED=1    Disable without removing the plugin
DO_NOT_TRACK=1              Honoured by the hook; the C3 privacy block
                            sets it (and DISABLE_TELEMETRY=1) by default
DISABLE_TELEMETRY=1         Honoured by the hook
FISH_WAKATIME_PROJECT=name  Send this constant project name instead of
                            the repository directory name
FISH_WAKATIME_IGNORE_DNT=1  Override: keep reporting even though
                            DO_NOT_TRACK / DISABLE_TELEMETRY are set

Because the C3 privacy block exports DO_NOT_TRACK=1 by default, the hook is silent out of the box while that block is active. To keep WakaTime reporting on a machine where you want it, set the override once:

set -U FISH_WAKATIME_IGNORE_DNT 1

This affects only the WakaTime hook. DO_NOT_TRACK and DISABLE_TELEMETRY stay exported and keep applying to every other tool. FISH_WAKATIME_DISABLED still switches the hook off regardless of the override. (Alternatively, disable the C3 privacy block or unset both variables after startup.)

Tailscale

Full tab completion for the tailscale CLI is provided via completions/tailscale.fish, which on the first tailscale<TAB> loads the completions generated by the installed binary (tailscale completion fish), so they always match its version.

Done Notifications

Desktop notifications fire when a command takes longer than 10 seconds and the terminal window is not focused. Configured via fish universal variables:

Variable	Value
__done_min_cmd_duration	10000 ms
__done_notification_urgency_level	low

Scrollback History

When running inside Kitty, closing a shell session via exit saves a timestamped scrollback snapshot to SCROLLBACK_HISTORY_DIR. Files are named:

scrollback_YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS.log

The paru and yay wrappers (auto-generated in ~/.local/bin/) run the command inside a PTY via script(1) so download progress bars are preserved on screen, then render the captured terminal animation down to a clean static log via scripts/clean_progress_log.py (a small terminal-screen emulator that replays cursor movements, collapses repainted progress frames to their final state, and preserves ANSI color). If python3 is unavailable the wrapper falls back to dropping only the script(1) header/footer. Output is saved to:

• paru_YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS.log
• yay_YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS.log

Before pruning, _scrollback_prune_junk silently removes empty files, files with only a single meaningful line (e.g. bare [exited] captures), and Kitty tab-rename prompt captures. Use exit --no-log (or exit -n) to skip capture.

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