tlrc manual

2026-05-22

NAME

tlrc - official tldr client written in Rust

SYNOPSIS

tldr [options] [page]...

DESCRIPTION

If the page argument is provided (with no other operations), tlrc displays the tldr page entitled page. If multiple arguments are provided, they are concatenated with hyphens between each argument (e.g. git checkout becomes git-checkout). Page names are case insensitive. If multiple pages are found, a warning is shown and the page from the preferred platform (see --platform) is displayed. If the page only exists in other platforms, a warning is shown and the page from the first platform (in alphabetical order) is displayed.
For other operations, see OPTIONS.

Pages are loaded from a cache directory. If this directory is empty, pages will be automatically downloaded when you run tldr. After that tlrc works completely offline until an automatic update is triggered (when the cache is more than 2 weeks old by default), or if an update is explicitly requested using --update.

OPTIONS

Operations

Only one of these options can be used at a time.

-u, --update: Update the cache of tldr pages. This will first download the sha256sums of all archives and compare them to the old sums to determine which languages need updating. If you want to force a redownload, run tldr --clean-cache beforehand.
-l, --list: List all English pages in the current platform, one per line (names only). The special platform common contains documentation for cross-platform tools, and is always listed.
-a, --list-all: List all English pages, one per line (names only).
-s, --search <KEYWORD>: List pages containing a keyword, along with their respective language and platform. All platforms are searched by default. If --platform is specified, this behaves like --list (i.e. the specified platform and common are searched).
--list-platforms: List available platforms.
--list-languages: List available languages. Use --info for a language list with more information.
-i, --info: Show cache information (path, age, installed languages and the number of pages).
-r, --render <FILE>: Render the specified tldr page.
--clean-cache: Interactively delete contents of the cache directory.
The tldr.sha256sums file is always removed to force a redownload of all page archives during the next update. You can also choose to delete already downloaded languages.
--gen-config: Print the default config to standard output.
--config-path: Print the default config path and create the config directory if it does not exist.
-v, --version: Print version information.
-h, --help: Print a help message.

Other options

These options modify the behavior of operations.

-p, --platform <PLATFORM>

Specify the platform to use (linux, osx, windows, etc.).

Tldr pages are grouped by the operating system the documented command runs on. If a program can run on more than one operating system (and behaves in the same way), the page for it is put into the special common platform, which is always searched. Specifying --platform common is allowed and causes common to be the only searched platform.

Default: the operating system you are currently running

-L, --language <LANGUAGE_CODE>

Specify the language to show pages in. Can be used multiple times. Overrides all other language detection methods. tlrc will not fall back to English when this option is used, and will instead show an error. Note that this option does not affect languages downloaded on --update. If you want to use languages not defined in environment variables, use the cache.languages option in the config file.

Default: taken from the config or the LANG and LANGUAGE environment variables. See
https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr/blob/main/CLIENT-SPECIFICATION.md#language for a detailed description of how tlrc determines the language.

--short-options

In option placeholders, display short options wherever possible.
Example: "{{[-s|--long]}}" will be displayed as "-s" when using this option. Equivalent of setting output.option_style="short" in the config.

When used with --long-options, the above placeholder will be displayed as "[-s|--long]". Using both options is equivalent to setting output.option_style="both" in the config.

--long-options

In option placeholders, display long options wherever possible.
Example: "{{[-s|--long]}}" will be displayed as "--long" when using this option. Equivalent of setting output.option_style="long" in the config.

This is the default.

--edit

Display a link to edit the shown page on GitHub. Equivalent of setting output.edit_link=true in the config.

The following link will be displayed:
https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr/edit/main/{{pages|pages.language}}/{{platform}}/{{page-name}}.md

-o, --offline

Do not update the cache, even if it is stale and automatic updates are on. Similar to setting cache.auto_update=false in the config, except using this will show an error if the cache is empty.

-c, --compact

Strip empty lines from output. Equivalent of setting output.compact=true in the config.

--no-compact

Do not strip empty lines from output. Equivalent of setting output.compact=false in the config. This always overrides --compact.

-R, --raw

Print pages in raw markdown. Equivalent of setting output.raw_markdown=true in the config.

--no-raw

Render pages instead of printing raw file contents. Equivalent of setting output.raw_markdown=false in the config. This always overrides --raw.

-q, --quiet

Suppress status messages and warnings. In other words, this makes tlrc print only pages and errors.

This always overrides --verbose.

--verbose

Be more verbose, print debug information. Useful to see what exactly is being done if you're having issues.

Can be specified twice for even more messages. Using --verbose more than twice has no other effect.

--color <WHEN>

Specify when to enable color.
Can be one of the following: 'always', 'never', 'auto'.
always forces colors on; never forces colors off; and auto only automatically enables colors when outputting onto a tty and the NO_COLOR environment variable is not set or is an empty string.

Default: auto

--config <FILE>

Specify an alternative path to the config file. This option overrides all config detection methods (i.e. OS-specific directories and the $TLRC_CONFIG environment variable).

Default: platform-dependent (use --config-path to see the default path for your system)

CONFIGURATION

To generate a default config file, run:

tldr --gen-config > "$(tldr --config-path)"

See https://github.com/tldr-pages/tlrc#configuration for an example config file with explanations.

The default config path depends on your operating system:
Linux and BSD: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/tlrc/config.toml or ~/.config/tlrc/config.toml if $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is unset
macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/tlrc/config.toml
Windows: %ROAMINGAPPDATA%\tlrc\config.toml

No matter the OS, you can set the $TLRC_CONFIG environment variable or use --config to override the default path. The command-line option takes precedence over all other detection methods.

EXAMPLES

See the tldr page for tar:

tldr tar

See the tldr page for diskpart, from platform windows:

tldr --platform windows diskpart

Search for pages that contain the string tar:

tldr --search tar

EXIT STATUSES

0: OK
1: I/O and various other errors
2: Invalid command-line arguments
3: TOML (config file) parse error
4: Errors related to cache updates (e.g. a failed HTTP GET request)
5: Tldr syntax error (e.g. a non-empty line that does not start with '# ', '> ', '- ' or '`')

AUTHOR

Lena Pastwa <[email protected]>