Skip to content

Introduction

Central to Hike's user interface is a command line; similar to a shell's command line. It has a history (use the up and down keys to navigate) as well as history auto-completion (use right to accept a suggestion).

Tip

Full help for all of the commands is available inside Hike itself by pressing F1 while the command line has focus.

The commands

Opening a file

There are three different ways to open a file for viewing, from the command line; they are:

With a file name

To open a local file, type in the name (including the path to it if it's not in the current working directory).

Entering a file's location Hike v0.11.0 │/Users/davep/develop/python/hike/README.md │━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ │ │ │Hike │▅ │🖼  Hike │ │🖼  GitHub Actions Workflow Status🖼  GitHub commits since latest release🖼 │GitHub Issues or Pull Requests🖼  GitHub Release Date🖼  PyPI - License🖼 │PyPI - Python Version🖼  PyPI - Version │ │ │Introduction │ │Hike is a Markdown browser for the terminal. It provides the ability to │browse for and view local Markdown files, as well as Markdown files that │can be downloaded from the web. It also has shortcuts that make it easy to │view Markdown files on popular git forges. │ │ │Installing > ~/myapp/README.md  f1 Help  f2 Nav  f5 Edit  f10 Quit  ^[ Backward  ^] Forward ▏^p Commands

With a URL

To open a file that is hosted on a website, type in the URL:

Entering a URL to view Hike v0.11.0 │/Users/davep/develop/python/hike/README.md │━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ │ │ │Hike │▅ │🖼  Hike │ │🖼  GitHub Actions Workflow Status🖼  GitHub commits since latest release🖼 │GitHub Issues or Pull Requests🖼  GitHub Release Date🖼  PyPI - License🖼 │PyPI - Python Version🖼  PyPI - Version │ │ │Introduction │ │Hike is a Markdown browser for the terminal. It provides the ability to │browse for and view local Markdown files, as well as Markdown files that │can be downloaded from the web. It also has shortcuts that make it easy to │view Markdown files on popular git forges. │ │ │Installing > https://raw.githubusercontent.com/davep/2bit.el/refs/heads/main/README.md  f1 Help  f2 Nav  f5 Edit  f10 Quit  ^[ Backward  ^] Forward ▏^p Commands

Via a file opening dialog

To open a file opening dialog at a specific directory, type in the directory you want to start browsing at:

Entering a directory to browse Hike v0.11.0 │/Users/davep/develop/python/hike/README.md │━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ │ │ │Hike │▅ │🖼  Hike │ │🖼  GitHub Actions Workflow Status🖼  GitHub commits since latest release🖼 │GitHub Issues or Pull Requests🖼  GitHub Release Date🖼  PyPI - License🖼 │PyPI - Python Version🖼  PyPI - Version │ │ │Introduction │ │Hike is a Markdown browser for the terminal. It provides the ability to │browse for and view local Markdown files, as well as Markdown files that │can be downloaded from the web. It also has shortcuts that make it easy to │view Markdown files on popular git forges. │ │ │Installing > ~/develop/python/hike/docs/source  f1 Help  f2 Nav  f5 Edit  f10 Quit  ^[ Backward  ^] Forward ▏^p Commands

and after you get Enter the dialog will open:

Browsing for a file to open Hike v0.11.0 │/Users/davep/develop/python/hike/README.md │━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ │ │┌─ Open ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │││ ││📁 ..                                                            128 2025-04-04 17:27:38│ │🖼  Hike│📄 changelog.md                                                   56 2025-04-04 17:27:38│ ││📄 commands.md                                                  5165 2025-04-06 15:05:34│ │🖼  GitHub│📄 configuration.md                                             8051 2025-04-05 10:19:50│s🖼 │GitHub Re│📄 index.md                                                     4924 2025-04-05 15:26:58│ ││📄 license.md                                                     96 2025-04-04 17:27:38│ │││ │Introduct││ │││▅ │Hike is a││n files, │as well a││ view │Markdown ││ │││ │││ │Installin││ │││ │pipx││ │││ │The appli││ │││ │││ │pipxin││ │││ │││ │Homebrew││ ││▊▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▎▊▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▎▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔│ │The packa│▊▎▊Markdown▼▎ Open  Cancel [Esc]│ ││▊▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▎▊▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▎▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁│ │││ │brewta└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │brewinstallhike │ > Enter a directory, file, path or command  f1 Help  f2 Nav  f5 Edit  f10 Quit  ^[ Backward  ^] Forward ▏^p Commands

There are some commands that interact with the navigation panel. These are:

bookmarks

Aliases

b bm

Ensures that the navigation panel is opened and then jumps to the bookmarks.

conents

Aliases

c toc

Ensures that the navigation panel is opened and then jumps to the Markdown document's table of contents.

history

Aliases

h

Ensures that the navigation panel is opened and then jumps to the document history.

local

Aliases

l

Ensures that the navigation panel is opened and then jumps to the local file system browser.

Viewing files on forges

Hike supports quickly viewing Markdown documents hosted on popular forges, the available commands are:

Forge commands

bitbucket

Alias

bb

Loads and views a file hosted on Bitbucket.

codeberg

Alias

cb

Loads and views a file hosted on Codeberg.

github

Alias

gh

Loads and views a file hosted on GitHub.

gitlab

Alias

gl

Loads and views a file hosted on GitLab.

Specifying the file to view

When using the forge commands listed above, a number of methods of specifying the file to view are supported:

Format Effect
<owner>/<repo> Open README.md from a repository
<owner> <repo> Open README.md from a repository
<owner>/<repo> <file> Open a specific file from a repository
<owner> <repo> <file> Open a specific file from a repository
<owner>/<repo>:<branch> Open README.md from a specific branch of a repository
<owner> <repo>:<branch> Open README.md from a specific branch of a repository
<owner>/<repo>:<branch> <file> Open a specific file from a specific branch of a repository
<owner> <repo>:<branch> <file> Open a specific file from a specific branch of a repository

So, for example, if you want to view Hike's README:

gh davep/hike

Or if you want to view Hike's change-log:

gh davep/hike ChangeLog.md

If you wanted to view the README file but in a feature branch called revamp-readme:

gh davep/hike:revamp-readme

etc.

Other commands

Other useful commands include:

chdir <dir>

Aliases

cd, dir, ls

Where <dir> is the path to a directory. This will change the root directory of the tree in the local file system browser in the navigation panel.

changelog

Aliases

cl

Loads and views Hike's ChangeLog.

help

Aliases

?

Shows Hike's help dialog.

obsidian

Aliases

obs

Changes the root directory of the tree in the local file system browser in the navigation panel so that it points to the root directory of your Obsidian vaults (obviously only useful if you are an Obsidian user).

readme

Loads and views Hike's README.