# Custom Pagers

Lazygit supports custom pagers, [configured](/docs/Config.md) in the config.yml file (which can be opened by pressing `e` in the Status panel).

Multiple pagers are supported; you can cycle through them with the `|` key. This can be useful if you usually prefer a particular pager, but want to use a different one for certain kinds of diffs.

Pagers are configured with the `pagers` array in the git section; here's an example for a multi-pager setup (use an empty object `{}` for the default builtin diff display that doesn't use a pager):

```yaml
git:
  pagers:
    - pager: delta --dark --paging=never
    - pager: ydiff -p cat -s --wrap --width={{columnWidth}}
      colorArg: never
    - externalDiffCommand: difft --color=always
    - {} # default, no pager used
```

The `colorArg` key is for whether you want the `--color=always` arg in your `git diff` command. Some pagers want it set to `always`, others want it set to `never`. The default is `always`, since that's what most pagers need.

## Delta:

```yaml
git:
  pagers:
    - pager: delta --dark --paging=never
```

![](https://i.imgur.com/QJpQkF3.png)

A cool feature of delta is --hyperlinks, which renders clickable links for the line numbers in the left margin, and lazygit supports these. To use them, set the `pager:` config to `delta --dark --paging=never --line-numbers --hyperlinks --hyperlinks-file-link-format="lazygit-edit://{path}:{line}"`; this allows you to click on an underlined line number in the diff to jump right to that same line in your editor.

Note that delta's `--navigate` option doesn't work in lazygit, for technical reasons.

## Diff-so-fancy

```yaml
git:
  pagers:
    - pager: diff-so-fancy
```

![](https://i.imgur.com/rjH1TpT.png)

## ydiff

```yaml
gui:
  sidePanelWidth: 0.2 # gives you more space to show things side-by-side
git:
  pagers:
    - colorArg: never
      pager: ydiff -p cat -s --wrap --width={{columnWidth}}
```

![](https://i.imgur.com/vaa8z0H.png)

Be careful with this one, I think the homebrew and pip versions are behind master. I needed to directly download the ydiff script to get the no-pager functionality working.

## Using external diff commands

Some diff tools can't work as a simple pager like the ones above do, because they need access to the entire diff, so just post-processing git's diff is not enough for them. The most notable example is probably [difftastic](https://difftastic.wilfred.me.uk).

These can be used in lazygit by using the `externalDiffCommand` config; in the case of difftastic, that could be

```yaml
git:
  pagers:
    - externalDiffCommand: difft --color=always
```

The `colorArg` option is not used in this case.

You can add whatever extra arguments you prefer for your difftool; for instance

```yaml
git:
  pagers:
    - externalDiffCommand: difft --color=always --display=inline --syntax-highlight=off
```

This can also be used for normal git diffs with custom parameters, such as `--color-words` or `--word-diff` which some people find useful. To do that, save a script like this to, say, `~/bin/color-words.sh`:

```sh
#!/bin/sh

git diff --color-words --no-index --color=always --no-ext-diff "$2" "$5"
```

And then use it in your git config like so:

```yaml
git:
  pagers:
    - externalDiffCommand: ~/bin/color-words.sh
```

Instead of setting this command in lazygit's `externalDiffCommand` config, you can also tell lazygit to use the external diff command that is configured in git itself (`diff.external`), by using

```yaml
git:
  pagers:
    - useExternalDiffGitConfig: true
```

This can be useful if you also want to use it for diffs on the command line, and it also has the advantage that you can configure it per file type in `.gitattributes`; see https://git-scm.com/docs/gitattributes#_defining_an_external_diff_driver.

`pager`, `externalDiffCommand`, and `useExternalDiffGitConfig` are alternative ways of producing the diff, so a pager entry may use at most one of them.