How to Use bat as a Better cat

bat is a cat clone written in Rust that adds syntax highlighting, line numbers, a built-in pager, and Git integration. It reads the same files and pipes you already use with cat, so adoption is low-friction. This guide walks through installation, the most useful features, and how to wire bat into your daily Git workflow.

Installation

Debian / Ubuntu

The package is called bat on Ubuntu 20.04+ and Debian 11+. On older Debian releases the binary was renamed batcat to avoid a name conflict; handle that with a symlink.

sudo apt update && sudo apt install bat

If your release installs it as batcat, create the symlink now so every example below works unchanged:

mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
ln -s /usr/bin/batcat ~/.local/bin/bat

Make sure ~/.local/bin is on your PATH (add export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH" to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc if needed).

Fedora / RHEL / Rocky

sudo dnf install bat

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S bat

Verify the install

bat --version

Output will look like bat 0.24.0 (version varies by distro).

Syntax Highlighting

bat auto-detects the language from the file extension and applies colour themes. Open any source file and the difference from plain cat is immediate:

bat /etc/ssh/sshd_config

To see every language bat recognises:

bat --list-languages

Force a specific language when the extension is ambiguous or missing:

bat --language=yaml deployment.conf

Choosing a colour theme

List available themes:

bat --list-themes

Preview a theme live:

bat --theme="Dracula" ~/.bashrc

Set a permanent default in bat's config file (created on first run or manually):

bat --generate-config-file

Then edit ~/.config/bat/config and add:

--theme="Dracula"

On terminals without true-colour support, base16 or ansi are safe fallbacks.

Line Numbers and Display Options

Line numbers are on by default when writing to a terminal. Control the decorations explicitly with --style:

# Show only line numbers and the file header, no Git gutter
bat --style=numbers,header /etc/fstab

Available style components include numbers, header, grid, rule, changes (Git gutter), snip, and full. Combine them with commas or use plain to strip everything:

# Plain output — identical to cat, useful in scripts
bat --style=plain /etc/hosts

Highlighting specific lines

Draw attention to a range or individual lines — useful when sharing terminal screenshots:

bat --highlight-line 10:20 server.conf

Showing non-printing characters

Equivalent to cat -A; useful for debugging hidden tabs or carriage returns:

bat --show-all suspicious_file.sh

Paging

bat pipes output through less automatically when content is taller than your terminal. The pager is fully configurable.

Controlling pager behaviour

# Disable the pager entirely
bat --paging=never Makefile

# Always page, even for short files
bat --paging=always README.md

The default less flags bat passes keep ANSI colours intact. You can override them:

export BAT_PAGER="less -RF"

Add that line to your shell's rc file to make it permanent. If you prefer more or moar, point BAT_PAGER at either.

Using bat as a man page viewer

bat ships a syntax definition for man pages. Override the MANPAGER environment variable:

export MANPAGER="sh -c 'col -bx | bat -l man -p'"

Put that in ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc, then man ls will render with syntax colour and bat's pager.

Git Integration

bat reads Git metadata from the repository containing the viewed file and marks added, modified, and removed lines in the left gutter — the same information git diff knows about, surfaced inline while you read a file.

The Git gutter

The gutter is part of the default style. Open any tracked file with uncommitted changes and you will see coloured markers (+, ~, -) next to modified lines. To make the gutter the only extra decoration:

bat --style=changes src/main.rs

Replacing git diff with bat

Tell Git to use bat as its diff pager so staged and unstaged diffs gain syntax colouring:

git config --global core.pager "bat --paging=always"

For a richer diff experience, pair bat with delta (a dedicated diff viewer that also uses bat's syntax engine), but plain bat as a pager already beats raw less for readability.

Previewing files in fzf with bat

If you use fzf for fuzzy finding, bat makes an excellent preview command:

export FZF_CTRL_T_OPTS="--preview 'bat --color=always --style=numbers --line-range=:100 {}'"

Add this to your shell rc file. Pressing Ctrl+T will now show a syntax-highlighted preview panel alongside the fuzzy finder.

Aliasing bat to cat

A common approach is to alias cat to bat so muscle memory keeps working. Add to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc:

alias cat='bat --paging=never'

--paging=never is important here: a true cat replacement should not hijack your terminal with a pager when you pipe output into another command. With paging off, bat passes through cleanly — cat file | grep pattern keeps working exactly as before. Syntax highlighting is automatically suppressed when stdout is not a terminal, so scripts are unaffected.

Verification

Confirm everything is wired up correctly:

# Check version and config path
bat --version
bat --config-file

# Confirm the theme is applied
bat --theme ~/.bashrc

# Confirm the alias works
type cat

The last command should print something like cat is aliased to 'bat --paging=never'. Open a file inside a Git repository with uncommitted changes and verify the gutter markers appear.

Troubleshooting

No colour output

If the terminal shows plain text with no highlighting, check that TERM is set to a value that supports colour (xterm-256color, tmux-256color, etc.). Force colour explicitly for one-off diagnosis:

bat --color=always /etc/hosts

bat: command not found after install on Debian

The binary is named batcat on some Debian releases. Check with which batcat, then create the symlink shown in the installation section above.

Pager exits immediately

If less quits before you can read the file, the -F flag (quit if output fits on one screen) is likely set in your LESS environment variable. Either remove that flag from LESS, or set BAT_PAGER="less -R" to override it for bat specifically.

Git gutter not showing

The gutter only appears when the file is inside a Git repository and has uncommitted modifications. Confirm with git status. Also verify --style includes changes or is set to full (the default).