How to enable tab completion for the .NET CLI

This article applies to: ✔️ .NET Core 2.1 SDK and later versions

This article describes how to configure tab completion for five shells: PowerShell, Bash, zsh, fish, and nushell. For other shells, refer to their documentation on how to configure tab completion.

Once set up, tab completion for the .NET CLI is triggered by entering a dotnet command in the shell and then pressing the Tab key. The current command line is sent to the dotnet complete command, and the results are processed by the shell. You can test the results without enabling tab completion by sending something directly to the dotnet complete command. For example:

> dotnet complete "dotnet a"
add
clean
--diagnostics
migrate
pack

If that command doesn't work, make sure that .NET Core 2.0 SDK or later is installed. If it's installed but that command still doesn't work, make sure that the dotnet command resolves to a version of .NET Core 2.0 SDK or later. Use the dotnet --version command to see what version of dotnet your current path is resolving to. For more information, see Select the .NET version to use.

Examples

Here are some examples of what tab completion provides:

Input	becomes	because
dotnet a⇥	dotnet add	add is the first subcommand, alphabetically.
dotnet add p⇥	dotnet add --help	Tab completion matches substrings and --help comes first alphabetically.
dotnet add p⇥⇥	dotnet add package	Pressing tab a second time brings up the next suggestion.
dotnet add package Microsoft⇥	dotnet add package Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.Web	Results are returned alphabetically.
dotnet remove reference ⇥	dotnet remove reference ..\..\src\OmniSharp.DotNet\OmniSharp.DotNet.csproj	Tab completion is project file aware.

PowerShell

To add tab completion to PowerShell for the .NET CLI, create or edit the profile stored in the variable $PROFILE. For more information, see How to create your profile and Profiles and execution policy.

Add the following code to your profile:

# PowerShell parameter completion shim for the dotnet CLI
Register-ArgumentCompleter -Native -CommandName dotnet -ScriptBlock {
    param($wordToComplete, $commandAst, $cursorPosition)
        dotnet complete --position $cursorPosition "$commandAst" | ForEach-Object {
            [System.Management.Automation.CompletionResult]::new($_, $_, 'ParameterValue', $_)
        }
}

bash

To add tab completion to your bash shell for the .NET CLI, add the following code to your .bashrc file:

# bash parameter completion for the dotnet CLI

function _dotnet_bash_complete()
{
  local cur="${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}" IFS=$'\n' # On Windows you may need to use use IFS=$'\r\n'
  local candidates

  read -d '' -ra candidates < <(dotnet complete --position "${COMP_POINT}" "${COMP_LINE}" 2>/dev/null)

  read -d '' -ra COMPREPLY < <(compgen -W "${candidates[*]:-}" -- "$cur")
}

complete -f -F _dotnet_bash_complete dotnet

zsh

To add tab completion to your zsh shell for the .NET CLI, add the following code to your .zshrc file:

# zsh parameter completion for the dotnet CLI

_dotnet_zsh_complete()
{
  local completions=("$(dotnet complete "$words")")

  # If the completion list is empty, just continue with filename selection
  if [ -z "$completions" ]
  then
    _arguments '*::arguments: _normal'
    return
  fi

  # This is not a variable assignment, don't remove spaces!
  _values = "${(ps:\n:)completions}"
}

compdef _dotnet_zsh_complete dotnet

fish

To add tab completion to your fish shell for the .NET CLI, add the following code to your config.fish file:

complete -f -c dotnet -a "(dotnet complete (commandline -cp))"

nushell

To add tab completion to your nushell for .NET CLI, add the following to the beginning of your config.nu file:

let external_completer = { |spans|
    {
        dotnet: { ||
            dotnet complete (
                $spans | skip 1 | str join " "
            ) | lines
        }
    } | get $spans.0 | each { || do $in }
}

And then in the config record, find the completions section and add the external_completer that was defined earlier to external:

let-env config = {
    # your options here
    completions: {
        # your options here
        external: {
            # your options here
            completer: $external_completer # add it here
        }
    }
}