Treemacs – tree layout file explorer for Emacs

Last Updated on March 8, 2026

Treemacs is a file and project explorer similar to NeoTree or vim’s NerdTree, but largely inspired by the Project Explorer in Eclipse. It shows the file system outlines of your projects in a simple tree layout allowing quick navigation and exploration, while also possessing basic file management utilities.

Treemacs is included in Spacemacs (for now only on the dev branch).

This is free and open source software.

Key Features

• Project management – view multiple file trees – projects – at once and quickly add or remove them, and groups projects in workspaces.
• Easy navigation – quickly move between projects or use shortcuts to jump to parent or neighbouring nodes.
• Versatile file access – decide exactly how and where a file will be opened, including using ace-window to choose a window or launching an external application.
• Understanding of frames – every frame will receive its own treemacs buffer that will live and die with that frame.
• Finding of files and tags – ollow along and keep in focus the currently selected file or even the tag at point, either manually or automatically using either treemacs-follow-mode or treemacs-tag-follow-mode.
• Git Integration – use different faces for files and directories based on their git status. The git process is run asynchronously, minimizing its performance impact.
• Winum & ace-window compatibility – does not interfere with winum’s and ace-window’s usual layouts.
• Projectile/project.el integration – quickly add your projectile projects to the treemacs workspace. project.el compatibility is built-in.
• Simple mouse interface – left clicks will work the same as you’re used to from with graphical applications
• Session persistence – automatically saves and restores your workspaces.
• Dashing good looks – uses (optionally resizable) PNG images in HD 22×22 resolution for its icons. When run in a terminal a simple fallback is used.
• Tag view – display files’ tags. All file types that Emacs can generate a (semantic) imenu index for are supported.
• Visual feedback – when it would otherwise be difficult to see the message in the minibuffer success/failure is indicated with pulse.el.
• Theming support – supports using multiple icon themes that can be changed at will.
• Ease of use – offers many configuration options, but comes with a set of (what hopefully should be) sane defaults.
• Bookmark integration – running bookmark-set on a Treemacs item will store a bookmark to Treemacs buffer for that item.

Website: github.com/Alexander-Miller/treemacs
Support:
Developer: Alexander Miller
License: GNU General Public License v3.0

Treemacs is written in Emacs Lisp. Learn Lisp with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

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