TuiFile

A file explorer for your terminal, with homerow-centric navigation.

TuiFile can

• have multiple instances, one for each open directory
• display recursive directory structures
• filter files using regex
• select multiple files at once
• create new directories
• copy, move and delete
• quickly open your $TERM and $EDITOR
• build the file list on a background thread to avoid blocking
• add more features (open an issue with ideas if you have any)

Demo

using i3 (wm) and zellij (green border).

https://github.com/Dummi26/tuifile/assets/67615357/0b0553c9-72e5-4d38-8537-f6cc39147ab1

Controls

Global

Ctrl+C/D -> quit Ctrl+Up/K -> previous Ctrl+Down/J -> next Ctrl+Left/H -> close Ctrl+Right/L -> duplicate

Normal

• Up/K or Down/J -> move selection
• Left/H -> go to parent directory
• Right/L -> go into directory
• A -> Alternate selection (toggle All)
• S -> Select or toggle current
• D -> Deselect all
• F -> focus Find/Filter bar
• M -> set Mode based on Find/Filter bar (see File List Modes)
• N -> New directory (name taken from find/filter bar text)
• C -> Copy selected to this directory
• R -> remove selected files and directories (not recursive: also requires selecting the directories content)
• P -> set Permissions (mode taken as base-8 number from find/filter bar text)
• O -> set Owner (and group - TODO!)
• 1-9 or 0 -> set recursive depth limit (0 = infinite)
• T -> open terminal here
• E -> open this file in your editor

Find/Filter Bar

• Esc -> back & discard
• Enter -> back & filter
• Backspace -> delete
• type to enter search regex

File List Modes

Blocking

This is the simplest mode. If listing all the files takes a long time, the program will be unresponsive.

To enable, type b into the filter bar, go back to files mode, and press m.

Threaded

To avoid blocking, this mode performs all filesystem operations in the background. Can cause flickering and isn't as responsive on fast disks.

To enable, type t into the filter bar, go back to files mode, and press m.

Timeout

Like blocking, but after the timeout is reached, tuifile will stop adding more files to the list. This means that file lists may be incomplete.

To enable, type b<seconds> into the filter bar, go back to files mode, and press m. Replace <seconds> with a number like 1 or 0.3.

TimeoutThenThreaded

Like blocking, but after the timeout is reached, tuifile will cancel the operation and restart it in threaded mode.

To enable, type t<seconds> into the filter bar, go back to files mode, and press m. Replace <seconds> with a number like 1 or 0.3.