Comment by tupolef

- For your 1st issue, you can setup bash to append commands rather than overwrite them. Here the part of my .bashrc about history:

  # append rather than overwrite
  shopt -s histappend
  # attempts to save all lines of a multiple-line command in the same history entry
  shopt -s cmdhist
  # with cmdhist, saved with embedded newlines rather than semicolon separators 
  shopt -s lithist
  
  HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth
  HISTSIZE=10000
  HISTFILESIZE=20000
  HISTTIMEFORMAT="%y/%m/%d %T "
  HISTIGNORE="history:ls:l:pwd:exit:"
  if [[ ${BASH_VERSION:0:1} -gt 5 || ${BASH_VERSION:0:1} -ge 5 && ${BASH_VERSION:2:1} -ge 1 ]]; then
    PROMPT_COMMAND=("history -a" "history -c" "history -r")
  else
    PROMPT_COMMAND="history -a; history -c; history -r"
  fi

- And about the 2nd issue, you should use fzf or skim (probably faster) to replace the ctrl-r binding. fzf includes such a script that you just need to call from .bashrc.

  # Enable key bindings for fzf
  if command -v fzf 1> /dev/null && [[ -f "/usr/share/doc/fzf/examples/key-bindings.bash" ]]; then
    source /usr/share/doc/fzf/examples/key-bindings.bash
  fi