What is Autocompletion?

Autocompletion, also known as tab-completion is a common feature of command-line interpreters. It allows you to type the first few characters of a command, and press a completion key (tab) to autocomplete the rest of the command.

In the case of multiple possibilities, it will list all possible command options beginning with those few characters.

Tidal Tools’s autocompletion feature can be very useful! For more details, consult tidal completion -h.

Setting up Autocompletion

Currently, Tidal Tools’s autocompletion feature is supported for Bash. Follow the instructions below on setting up autocompletion for your operating system.

Linux

Before enabling tidal autocompletion, be sure to install bash completion with the following command:

sudo apt install bash-completion

Now, to enable the autocompletion feature to your current shell, run:

source <(tidal completion bash)

The following command will set up Tidal autocompletion to your profile, so that it is automatically enabled for any new shell session you open.

echo "source <(tidal completion bash)" >> ~/.bashrc

macOS

On macOS, you must have bash-completion support installed.

If not, you can install bash-completion via Homebrew.

Next, if you are running Bash 3.2, run:

brew install bash-completion

or if you are running Bash 4.1+

brew install bash-completion@2

After installing bash-completion support or have already installed it, you can add Tidal autocompletion to the bash-completion:

tidal completion bash > $(brew --prefix)/etc/bash_completion.d/tidal