nbsee 0.1.1

Rich/Textual terminal viewer for Jupyter notebooks focused on copying code and text outputs

nbsee

Simple CLI viewer for Jupyter notebooks focused on fast reading and easy copying of code and text outputs from the terminal.

Features

• Interactive terminal viewer for .ipynb files
• Vim-style navigation between cells
• Toggle focus between code/markdown and outputs
• Copy code or outputs directly to clipboard
• Visual selection mode to copy multiple cells
• Search through inputs and outputs
• Python syntax highlighting via Rich

Usage

• nbsee notebook.ipynb — open an interactive viewer.

Key bindings

• j/k: move to next/previous cell
• Arrow Up/Down: scroll the view line-by-line
• PageUp/PageDown: page scroll
• Ctrl+u / Ctrl+d: half-page scroll up/down
• Tab: toggle focus between input (code/markdown) and output (text/plain)
• If a cell has no text output, Tab does nothing and shows a brief message.
• y: copy the currently focused region to clipboard using xclip -selection clipboard
• z: hide/show all outputs (fold outputs)
• Shift+V: start/stop visual selection for inputs; use j/k to expand/shrink; y copies all selected code cells
• /: search (inputs+outputs). Enter to submit, Esc cancels
• n / N: next/prev match
• gg / G: jump to first / last cell
• q: quit

Notes

• Clipboard support requires xclip (Linux/X11)
• When no text output is available, copy shows an inline message

Install

uv (recommended)

uv is a fast Python package manager. Install it from here.

# Run without installing
uvx nbsee notebook.ipynb

# Or install permanently
uv tool install nbsee

pip

pip install nbsee

Development (uv)

• Quick run without installing: uv run -m nbsee path/to/notebook.ipynb
• Run tests: uv run pytest
• Lint/format check: uv run ruff check . and uv run ruff format --check .
• Build distributions: uv build
• Release: push a tag like v0.1.0 to trigger .github/workflows/publish.yml (requires PyPI trusted publishing setup).
• Install editable and use nbsee command:
  • Create venv: uv venv
  • Activate: source .venv/bin/activate
  • Install: uv pip install -e .
  • Run: nbsee path/to/notebook.ipynb