elio is a terminal file manager that combines fast file browsing with rich previews in a three-pane text user interface. Its layout separates frequently used locations, file listings, and previews, making it easy to navigate the filesystem while inspecting content.
The application aims to bring conveniences normally associated with graphical file managers into the terminal. It supports keyboard and mouse navigation, file operations, configurable views, and integration with external applications.
One of elio’s strengths is its broad preview support. Users can inspect documents, images, archives, source code, and media-related information without repeatedly switching between separate applications.
The file manager also incorporates directory jumping, duplicate detection, archive management, and shell integration, making it suitable for general file management as well as more specialised terminal workflows.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Three-pane layout displaying Places, Files, and Preview areas side by side.
- Adaptive layout that adjusts to different terminal sizes.
- List and grid views with adjustable grid zoom.
- Rich previews for text, source code, Markdown, structured data, PDFs, ebooks, office documents, archives, and media files.
- Inline image rendering in terminals supporting Kitty Graphics, iTerm2 Inline, or Sixel protocols.
- Bulk file operations for creating, renaming, copying, moving, and deleting multiple items.
- Archive creation and extraction, including support for password-protected archives.
- Duplicate finder for locating files with identical contents.
- Fuzzy searching for files and directories.
- Integration with zoxide for jumping to frequently visited directories.
- Customisable places and automatically detected storage devices and mounts.
- Trash management with options to restore or permanently delete files.
- Open With functionality for selecting external applications.
- Drag-and-drop support in compatible Kitty terminals.
- Shell integration for returning to the last visited directory on exit.
- File chooser functionality for use by other applications.
- Customisable keyboard shortcuts, file classes, colours, and themes.
- Cross-platform support – runs on Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD.
Website: github.com/elio-fm/elio
Support:
Developer: elio-fm
License: MIT License
elio is written in Rust. Learn Rust with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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