Guard shows a Pry console whenever it has nothing to do and comes with some Guard specific Pry commands:

• ↩, a, all: Run all plugins.
• h, help: Show help for all interactor commands.
• c, change: Trigger a file change.
• n, notification: Toggles the notifications.
• p, pause: Toggles the file listener.
• r, reload: Reload all plugins.
• o, scope: Scope Guard actions to plugins or groups.
• s, show: Show all Guard plugins.
• e, exit: Stop all plugins and quit Guard

The all and reload commands supports an optional scope, so you limit the Guard action to either a Guard plugin or a Guard group like:

[1]  guard(main)> all rspec
[2]  guard(main)> all frontend

Remember, you can always use help on the Pry command line to see all available commands and help <command> for more detailed information. help guard will show all Guard related commands available

Pry supports the Ruby built-in Readline, rb-readline and Coolline. Just install the readline implementation of your choice by adding it to your Gemfile.

You can also disable the interactions completely by running Guard with the --no-interactions option.

Further Guard specific customizations can be made in ~/.guardrc that will be evaluated prior the Pry session is started (~/.pryrc is ignored). This allows you to make use of the Pry plugin architecture to provide custom commands and extend Guard for your own needs and distribute as a gem. Please have a look at the Pry Wiki for more information.

You can also interact with Guard by sending POSIX signals to the Guard process (all but Windows and JRuby).

If the Pry interactor is used, then Ctrl-C is delegated to Pry to exit continuation and Ctrl-D to exit Guard. Without interactor, Ctrl-C exits Guard and Ctrl-D is ignored.

$ kill -USR1 <guard_pid>

$ kill -USR2 <guard_pid>