tim

The Mac-friendly command line text editor.

Features

• Straightforward macOS editing experience from the command line.
• Familiar macOS text navigation shortcuts.
• Mouse support with single, double, and triple-click selection.
• Mouse wheel support for scrolling longer documents.
• System clipboard copy/paste/cut shortcuts ^C/^V/^X.
• Undo/redo shortcuts with ^Z/^Y.
• Save new or edited documents with ^S.
• Search with ⌃F and optional /regex/ search.
• Line numbers toggle with ⌃L.
• Simple visual marker for documents that have unsaved changes.
• Proportional scrollbar you can drag to scroll through a document.
• Automatic line wrapping.
• Indentation preservation when moving to a new line.
• Automatic avoidance of opening binary files.
• Status footer with command hints, line/column counts, and selection summaries.
• Looks great in with or without terminal colors.
• Mac-like ^Q and ^W shortcuts to close tim.
• Open documents over HTTP(S) like tim https://mierau.me
• Open text-friendly versions of Wikipedia articles like tim --wikipedia albert einstein.
• Open text formatted RSS/Atom feeds like tim --rss www.apple.com/newsroom.
• Open text formatted Bluesky feeds like tim --bluesky @blippo.plus

Installation

1. Ensure Xcode command line tools or a Swift 5.9+ toolchain is installed.
2. Clone this repository.
3. Build the CLI:

   swift build

   Add -c release for a release optimized build.

Usage

Open tim without arguments to start with an empty buffer:

tim

Open a file, optionally jumping to a specific line:

tim path/to/file
tim path/to/file:+42
tim +42 path/to/file

Open a file over http(s):

tim https://web.site/document.html

Open a text-friendly Wikipedia article: Option: -w or --wikipedia

tim -w albert einstein

Open an RSS or Atom feed: Option: -r or --rss

tim -r https://example.com/feed.xml

Open a Bluesky user's public feed: Option -b or --bluesky

tim -b mierau.bsky.social

Additional flags:

• tim --help prints the available options.
• tim --version shows the current release tag.
• tim - reads buffer contents from standard input (ASCII or UTF-8 text only).
• tim -r <url> downloads and formats an RSS/Atom feed.
• tim -w <article title> fetches a text-friendly version of a Wikipedia article.
• tim -b <handle> fetches a Bluesky profile feed by handle, DID, or profile URL.
• Use -- before a path that begins with - to treat it literally.

Find within the current buffer with ⌃F, advance matches with ⌃G, move backward with ⌃R, and press Esc (or ⌃F a second time) to close. After opening the prompt, pressing ⌃F moves focus to the document so subsequent typing edits the buffer; run ⌃F once more to exit. Surround the query with / characters to run a regular expression, e.g. /^[A-Z].*/.

License

This project is available under the terms of the MIT License.

Project Layout

• src/app.swift wires CLI parsing, document loading, and editor launch
• src/cli.swift defines the command-line interface (tim, -w, -r, -b, etc.)
• src/editorcontroller.swift runs the terminal session and render loop
• src/editorstate.swift stores buffer contents, selections, undo stacks, layout cache, and UI flags
• src/actions.swift applies text mutations, clipboard operations, and undo bookkeeping
• src/input.swift reads raw key bytes
• src/keys.swift translates key combos into editor actions
• src/mouse.swift processes mouse wheel clicks/drags and scrollbar interaction
• src/layout.swift converts logical lines into wrapped visual rows
• src/renderer.swift draws the editor frame, gutter, footer, highlights, and cursor
• src/scrollbar.swift computes proportional scrollbar geometry consumed by the renderer
• src/terminal.swift handles escape sequences, raw-mode setup, and alt-screen helpers
• src/documentloader.swift coordinates local files, stdin, HTTP, Wikipedia, RSS, and Bluesky sources
• src/http.swift provides synchronous networking utilities used by the loaders
• src/wikipedia.swift formats article extracts for the editor
• src/rss.swift parses feeds and renders plain-text timelines
• src/bluesky.swift talks to the public Bluesky API and normalizes posts
• src/clipboard.swift bridges to macOS pbcopy/pbpaste
• src/control.swift houses small reusable UI helper structs
• src/textfield.swift implements the editable field used by the find prompt and similar UI

Screenshots

Use tim to open text-friendly Wikipedia articles by title.

tim --wikipedia albert einstein

---

Use tim to open text formatted RSS/Atom feeds.

tim --rss daringfireball.net

---

Use tim to open text formatted Bluesky feeds.

tim --bluesky @panic.com