Feature request: disable live updating of time since command

[rmartine-ias]

When the "seconds/minutes ago" field updates in real-time, the changing digits divert my attention and disrupt my focus. (I recognize that being unable to ignore this is unusual; I also have trouble with flashing lights while driving that other people seem to be able to ignore.)

[conradludgate]

Perfectly reasonable request. I wouldn't mind just considering this a bug and 'fixing' it for all installs.

A PR here would be greatly appreciated 🙏

[ellie]

I think I'd prefer that this be configurable, personally I quite like them live updating. And I'm sure if we changed the default we'd have issues from a whole bunch of people feeling the same

[conradludgate]

We could have a "reduced motion" config then. Would be a good general config we can bunch other things with

[rmartine-ias]

This could be done as an env var like NO_COLOR, if you think other tools might want to switch off a similar setting. I searched and didn't see prior art on this.
Trying to come up with a standard would be a lot more work than adding a config option, though.

[conradludgate]

I was imagining a shell equivalent of https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/prefers-reduced-motion PREFERS_REDUCED_MOTION=1 or prefers_reduced_motion = true

[ellie]

I love this idea! Let's go for the env var and the config. Maybe we don't need to make it a proper standard, but could nudge people to implement the same

[floating-cat]

I support this feature too because currently:

• If I select something in the history trying to copy, if the time updates at that time, the selected will be lost.
• Updating time steals my attention and disrupts my focus too.

The time update is a cool feature but not a useful feature because I really don't need the precise time there.

[ellie]

Implemented in this PR: #1645

And will be in the next release

Either set

prefers_reduced_motion = true

in your Atuin config, or set NO_MOTION in your env