Using Yazi as a launcher that spawns a shell at its last directory

[WantenMN]

Here is a small Bash script I wrote to integrate Yazi with my workflow in niri and Zellij.

It runs Yazi as a launcher, and when you exit, it spawns a new shell session starting in the last directory you navigated to inside Yazi.
This is useful in tiling window managers or terminal multiplexers where you often want to quickly browse to a directory and then stay there.

Script: yazi-new-shell.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -e

tmp="$(mktemp -t "yazi-cwd.XXXXXX")"

yazi "$@" --cwd-file="$tmp"

if cwd="$(<"$tmp")" && [ -n "$cwd" ]; then
    rm -f -- "$tmp"
    cd "$cwd" || exit
    exec "${SHELL:-/bin/bash}"
else
    rm -f -- "$tmp"
    echo "No valid cwd found"
    exit 1
fi

---

Example: niri

In your niri/config.kdl:

Mod+O repeat=false {
    spawn "alacritty" "-e" "/path/to/yazi-new-shell.sh"
}

or

Mod+O repeat=false {
    spawn "alacritty" "-e" "zellij" "--layout" "yazi_layout"
}

---

Example: Zellij

In your yazi_layout.kdl:

layout {
    pane command="sh" {
        args "-c" "/path/to/yazi-new-shell.sh"
    }
}