2y ago

What terminal file manager that you use, if any?

Long time nnn user right now. But interested in hearing some other people suggestions in case I missed something more interesting.

46 comments

ranger is another good one. I very rarely end up using a terminal file manager though.
- Yeah. I keep hearing good things about ranger. Might give this a try soon
- I use ranger with zoxide plugin, very handy. I even use it inside neovim as well, using rnvimr plugin.

lf is like ranger, but also very fast https://github.com/gokcehan/lf
- There is also joshuto, another ranger clone, written in rust.
  https://github.com/kamiyaa/joshuto
- I used ranger previously, but I'm an lf convert. It was a bit difficult to set some things up, but it's blazing fast and there are things about it I prefer.

I consider ranger and fzf life changing, especially being able to get the full path of any file at my command prompt at a moment's notice. It's now as though navigating directories were gauche.

ranger and I have nothing but praise for it. That's as a Linux user of 15 years, formerly a bit of a skeptic about the use of such a tool. I use it not just as a file manager but as a platform for launching scripts and GUI programs via key bindings. I've pretty much turned it into a TUI desktop environment at this point. Because, yes, it is possible to do computing more efficiently than with a CLI alone, whatever the purists may say. For me, TUI tools are the sweet spot: less keystrokes, less memorizing, but also extremely hackable given that there's no GUI to deal with.
Addendum: and fzf in the scripts! Like someone else said, this simple little tool makes so much possible.

I used to use nnn but I've recently fallen in love with xplr but honestly about 90% of the time I just use ls, cp and mv (although I sometimes also use broot as well).
- I use broot all the time and appreciate that xplr is more plugin oriented or flexible is some ways, but don't really feel I need more than broot so haven't given xplr a proper try.
  As you use both, would you say there's a particular feature or task that has you reaching for xplr over broot?
  
  xplr I probably use more (like nnn) for the tasks I would normally reach for a GUI file manager where broot I use (probably under-use) it as a fancy tree and ls - i.e. still using standard terminal commands to actually do stuff vs just moving things around

Never been a fan of terminal file managers, I just use exa and cd. Also z for directory jumping.

midnight commander, especially if i need to delete files/dirs with '-' and non-ascii characters. i do it without thinking.

Most of the time I just use the commandline stuff (cd ls mv rm etc.) but I have vifm installed if I really want one

https://vifm.info
In this case, however, it cannot be said that I am using it as intended. The AUR helper I use, aurutils, uses Vifm to display the respective PKBUILD file during an update, for example.

I've tried a bunch like ranger, lf, vifm, sfm and even some different ones like clifm. I always come back to nnn though. Nothing beats its speed and config options.

Coreutils, rsync. In more complex scenarios zmv from zsh.
Yes, I almost not use any GUI to manage my files.

I had straight up just never considered that terminal file explorers existed. This post has opened my eyes, and so here is my Saved comment. (Maybe one day, kbin will implement saving without commenting...)