Cannot see history from other host in global mode even though sync works

Hi all,

I’m trying to set up history sync between two devices. I’ve:

  • installed atuin on both machines,
  • logged into my self-hosted atuin instance on both machines (same account and key), and
  • imported my local shell history into atuin on both machines, then synced both.

atuin store verify says everything is okay, and atuin sync syncs successfully.

However, when accessing the history with Ctrl+R, I cannot see my other machine’s history, even though I am in global search mode. I’ve tried syncing manually with atuin sync -f, but this does not help (the sync succeeds, I just can’t see any of the history from the other machine).

However, running atuin store status on either of the machines does show that the data from both machines is present on each (even though I can’t see it in search):

host: 01a097ba-1e5e-7182-99b6-d67115919208 <- CURRENT HOST
        store: history
                idx: 20833
                first: 01a097bb-8afe-75c3-8ae8-7665fac19980
                        created: 2026-09-13 0:27:25.566436 +02:00:00
                last: 01a0b3bd-f3e3-7a80-b11c-2d8e6992daac
                        created: 2026-09-18 10:59:25.5398735 +02:00:00

host: 01a0b3a1-9833-7403-938a-113b26a751fc
        store: history
                idx: 1653
                first: 01a0b3a1-b98b-7c90-801e-f5bc361fdd46
                        created: 2026-09-18 10:28:35.5950697 +02:00:00
                last: 01a0b3b4-1ef1-70c3-b03a-7fdb00fec45c
                        created: 2026-09-18 10:48:41.201935087 +02:00:00

(My configuration file has basically no custom stuff other than UI adjustments and a different sync_address.)

What am I missing here? I’m new to atuin so I might have missed something obvious, sorry.

Per default, you get only entries from the same shell (bash, zsh, …), assuming you are using the latest version of atuin.

docs → config → shells

Damn, didn’t spot that default while browsing the config.

That was indeed the issue, I set shells = "all" (under [search]) and that did it. Thanks!

Same here. I wished, the shells setting would allow something like:
[['bash', 'zsh'], ['nushell']].