zi light

Summary

Load a plugin without reporting or investigation for maximum performance. Use this for trusted plugins where you do not need Zinit to track their side effects.

Syntax / Usage

zi light [-b] {plg-spec}

-b — investigate bindkey calls only, even though full investigation is disabled. Equivalent to the trackbinds ice modifier.

Details

light clones and sources the plugin the same way load does but skips all instrumentation. No report data is collected, so zi report and zi unload will not work for plugins loaded this way. This makes startup faster, especially for plugins that register many aliases or functions. The light-mode ice modifier achieves the same effect when using the for-syntax where no explicit load/light subcommand is written.

Examples

# Fast load without investigation
zi light zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions
zi light zdharma-continuum/fast-syntax-highlighting

# Track only bindkeys (for remapping with bindmap'')
zi light -b some-user/some-plugin

# Via for-syntax with light-mode ice
zinit for \
    light-mode \
  zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions \
    light-mode \
  zdharma-continuum/fast-syntax-highlighting

Caveats / Common Mistakes

Because no unload data is collected, zi unload will silently do nothing for plugins loaded with light. Switch to zi load if you need to be able to unload a plugin at runtime.