Command Line Options
lychee supports a lot of command line options.
You can see all of them by running lychee --help.
Below is the full list of options with a short description.
Options
A fast, async link checker
Finds broken URLs and mail addresses inside Markdown, HTML, `reStructuredText`, websites and more!
Usage: lychee [OPTIONS] <inputs>...
Arguments: <inputs>... The inputs (where to get links to check from). These can be: files (e.g. `README.md`), file globs (e.g. `"~/git/*/README.md"`), remote URLs (e.g. `https://example.com/README.md`) or standard input (`-`). NOTE: Use `--` to separate inputs from options that allow multiple arguments
Options: -c, --config <CONFIG_FILE> Configuration file to use
[default: lychee.toml]
-v, --verbose... Set verbosity level; more output per occurrence (e.g. `-v` or `-vv`)
-q, --quiet... Less output per occurrence (e.g. `-q` or `-qq`)
-n, --no-progress Do not show progress bar. This is recommended for non-interactive shells (e.g. for continuous integration)
--cache Use request cache stored on disk at `.lycheecache`
--max-cache-age <MAX_CACHE_AGE> Discard all cached requests older than this duration
[default: 1d]
--dump Don't perform any link checking. Instead, dump all the links extracted from inputs that would be checked
--dump-inputs Don't perform any link extraction and checking. Instead, dump all input sources from which links would be collected
--archive <ARCHIVE> Specify the use of a specific web archive. Can be used in combination with `--suggest`
[possible values: wayback]
--suggest Suggest link replacements for broken links, using a web archive. The web archive can be specified with `--archive`
-m, --max-redirects <MAX_REDIRECTS> Maximum number of allowed redirects
[default: 5]
--max-retries <MAX_RETRIES> Maximum number of retries per request
[default: 3]
--max-concurrency <MAX_CONCURRENCY> Maximum number of concurrent network requests
[default: 128]
-T, --threads <THREADS> Number of threads to utilize. Defaults to number of cores available to the system
-u, --user-agent <USER_AGENT> User agent
[default: lychee/0.14.2]
-i, --insecure Proceed for server connections considered insecure (invalid TLS)
-s, --scheme <SCHEME> Only test links with the given schemes (e.g. https). Omit to check links with any other scheme. At the moment, we support http, https, file, and mailto
--offline Only check local files and block network requests
--include <INCLUDE> URLs to check (supports regex). Has preference over all excludes
--exclude <EXCLUDE> Exclude URLs and mail addresses from checking (supports regex)
--exclude-file <EXCLUDE_FILE> Deprecated; use `--exclude-path` instead
--exclude-path <EXCLUDE_PATH> Exclude file path from getting checked
-E, --exclude-all-private Exclude all private IPs from checking. Equivalent to `--exclude-private --exclude-link-local --exclude-loopback`
--exclude-private Exclude private IP address ranges from checking
--exclude-link-local Exclude link-local IP address range from checking
--exclude-loopback Exclude loopback IP address range and localhost from checking
--exclude-mail Exclude all mail addresses from checking (deprecated; excluded by default)
--include-mail Also check email addresses
--remap <REMAP> Remap URI matching pattern to different URI
--header <HEADER> Custom request header
-a, --accept <ACCEPT> A List of accepted status codes for valid links
The following accept range syntax is supported: [start]..[=]end|code. Some valid examples are:
- 200..=204 - 200..204 - ..=204 - ..204 - 200
Use "lychee --accept '200..=204, 429, 500' <inputs>..." to provide a comma- separated list of accepted status codes. This example will accept 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 429, and 500 as valid status codes.
[default: 100..=103,200..=299,403..=403]
--include-fragments Enable the checking of fragments in links
-t, --timeout <TIMEOUT> Website timeout in seconds from connect to response finished
[default: 20]
-r, --retry-wait-time <RETRY_WAIT_TIME> Minimum wait time in seconds between retries of failed requests
[default: 1]
-X, --method <METHOD> Request method
[default: get]
-b, --base <BASE> Base URL or website root directory to check relative URLs e.g. https://example.com or `/path/to/public`
--basic-auth <BASIC_AUTH> Basic authentication support. E.g. `http://example.com username:password`
--github-token <GITHUB_TOKEN> GitHub API token to use when checking github.com links, to avoid rate limiting
[env: GITHUB_TOKEN]
--skip-missing Skip missing input files (default is to error if they don't exist)
--include-verbatim Find links in verbatim sections like `pre`- and `code` blocks
--glob-ignore-case Ignore case when expanding filesystem path glob inputs
-o, --output <OUTPUT> Output file of status report
-f, --format <FORMAT> Output format of final status report (compact, detailed, json, markdown)
[default: compact]
--require-https When HTTPS is available, treat HTTP links as errors
--cookie-jar <COOKIE_JAR> Tell lychee to read cookies from the given file. Cookies will be stored in the cookie jar and sent with requests. New cookies will be stored in the cookie jar and existing cookies will be updated
-h, --help Print help (see a summary with '-h')
-V, --version Print versionOn Schemes
lychee supports the following schemes:
httphttpsfilemailto
If you don’t specify any schemes, lychee will check all links regardless of their scheme. Otherwise, it will only check links with the specified schemes.
Repeating Options
Options marked with ... can be specified multiple times.
For example, --exclude can be specified multiple times to exclude multiple URLs.
This is also true for --headers, --include, --remap, --scheme, and --exclude-path.
Here is an example:
lychee --exclude https://example.com --exclude https://example.orgThere is a shorthand where you can specify multiple arguments in one go.
Instead of writing this:
lychee --scheme http --scheme file https://example.comYou can also write this:
lychee --scheme http file -- https://example.com