mru.nvim

A lightweight Neovim plugin to manage and display your Most Recently Used (MRU) files.

• 📘 Intro
• ❓ Why not v:oldfiles?
• ✨ Features
• 📦 Installation
• 🔧 Configuration
• ⚙️ Basic Usage
  • Commands
  • API
  • Quickfix
  • Picker mru
  • Telescope mru
• 📣 Self-Promotion
• 📄 License

📘 Intro

mru.nvim keeps track of the files you've recently opened in Neovim and provides quick access to them via quickfix, picker.nvim, or telescope.nvim extension.

❓ Why not v:oldfiles?

mru.nvim does not aim to replace v:oldfiles directly. Instead, it maintains its own MRU tracking to address several practical limitations:

• Unified path format: v:oldfiles may contain inconsistent or duplicated paths on Windows.
• Regex-based path filtering: Exclude files or directories to avoid recording sensitive paths.
• Editable and persistent: The MRU list can be modified, and changes remain effective after restarting Neovim.
• Fuzzy search support: Integrates with picker.nvim or telescope.nvim for fuzzy searching recently edited files.
• Flexible sorting strategies: Sort by last enter time, read time, modified time, or frecency.

✨ Features

• Unified file path format - Consistent paths across platforms.
• Regex-based path filtering - Exclude sensitive or unwanted paths.
• Lightweight and no dependencies - Zero required dependencies.
• Devicons support - Optional integration with nvim-web-devicons.
• Flexible sorting - Sort by lastenter, lastread, lastmod, or frecency.
• Persistent cache - MRU list survives Neovim restarts.
• Backup and recover - Clear and restore your MRU list anytime.

📦 Installation

Use your preferred Neovim plugin manager to install mru.nvim.

Using nvim-plug:

require('plug').add({
  { 'wsdjeg/mru.nvim' }
})

Then use :PlugInstall mru.nvim to install this plugin.

Using LuaRocks:

luarocks install mru.nvim

🔧 Configuration

The following is the default option of mru.nvim.

require('mru').setup({
  -- enable or disable cache (default: true)
  enable_cache = true,
  -- cache file path (default: stdpath('data') .. '/nvim-mru.json')
  mru_cache_file = vim.fn.stdpath('data') .. '/nvim-mru.json',
  -- backup file path (default: stdpath('data') .. '/nvim-mru-backup.json')
  mru_backup_file = vim.fn.stdpath('data') .. '/nvim-mru-backup.json',
  -- table of regex to ignore paths (default: {})
  ignore_path_regexs = { '/.git/' },
  -- enable logger.nvim (default: false, requires wsdjeg/logger.nvim)
  enable_logger = false,
  -- sort strategy: `lastenter`, `lastread`, `lastmod`, or `frecency`
  -- default: `lastenter`
  sort_by = 'lastenter',
})

⚙️ Basic Usage

Commands

Command	Description
:Mru	List MRU files in the quickfix window
:Mru remove {re}	Remove files matching regex from the MRU list

API

Function	Description
require('mru').setup(opt)	Initialize the plugin with options
require('mru').get()	Returns a sorted list of MRU file paths
require('mru').clear()	Backup current list to backup file, then clear
require('mru').recover()	Restore MRU list from backup file
require('mru').remove(regex)	Remove files matching regex from MRU list
require('mru').calculate_frecentcy(f)	Calculate frecency score for a file

Quickfix

Run :Mru to list all MRU files in the quickfix window:

:Mru

Remove files matching a regex pattern:

:Mru remove \.tmp$

Or via Lua API:

require('mru').remove('\\.tmp$')

Picker mru

mru.nvim provides a source for picker.nvim, which can be opened via :Picker mru.

Key bindings for picker mru extension:

Key Binding	Description
<Enter>	Open file in the current window
<C-s>	Open file in a horizontal split window
<C-v>	Open file in a vertical split window
<C-t>	Open file in a new tab

vim.api.nvim_set_keymap('n', '<leader>m', ':Picker mru<CR>', { noremap = true, silent = true })

Telescope mru

mru.nvim also provides a telescope.nvim extension:

vim.api.nvim_set_keymap('n', '<leader>m', ':Telescope mru<CR>', { noremap = true, silent = true })

Now, pressing <leader>m (e.g., \m by default) will open the MRU list.

📣 Self-Promotion

Like this plugin? Star the repository on GitHub.

Love this plugin? Follow me on GitHub.

📄 License

This project is licensed under the GPL-3.0 License.