A lightweight, modern, and extremely fast dual-pane terminal file manager written in Rust, utilizing ratatui for UI rendering and crossterm for terminal event processing.
Designed with rich aesthetics, inspired by Midnight Commander but styled with modern, curated dark color palettes.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/KvizadSaderah/rc/master/install.sh | bashThis installer detects your OS (macOS/Linux), downloads the precompiled binary (on macOS) or automatically compiles it from source using cargo (on Linux), and installs it to ~/.local/bin/rc.
If you want to build and run it manually:
git clone https://github.com/KvizadSaderah/rc.git
cd rc
cargo build --release
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
ln -sf $(pwd)/target/release/rc ~/.local/bin/rcNote
Make sure ~/.local/bin is in your PATH environment variable. If not, add export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH" to your .zshrc or .bashrc.
Once installed, simply type rc to launch the file manager from anywhere!
The navigation controls dynamically adapt depending on whether you are using Standard (default) or Vim keybindings:
| Shortcut (Standard) | Shortcut (Vim Mode) | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Tab | Tab | Switch focus between the Left and Right panels |
| Up / Down | j / k | Move selection cursor in the active panel list |
| Enter / Right | l | Enter directories / Open file preview viewer |
| Backspace / Left | h | Go to the parent directory |
| Space | Space | Tag/Mark file for bulk Copy/Move/Delete (moves cursor down automatically) |
| Ctrl + A | Ctrl + A | Select / deselect all items in the active panel |
| . | . | Toggle show/hide hidden files (starting with .) |
| Ctrl + P | p | Toggle Quick View Mode (active folder live preview inside the inactive pane!) |
| Ctrl + T | Ctrl + T | Toggle Tree View in the left panel |
| Ctrl + S | o | Open Settings/Configuration overlay |
| Ctrl + O | Ctrl + O | Open Terminal Overlay (streaming command output) |
| Ctrl + B | Ctrl + B | Open Bookmarks; Ctrl + D bookmarks the current folder |
| Ctrl + F | Ctrl + F | Fuzzy Find files recursively in the active directory (uses fd + fzf) |
| Ctrl + G | Ctrl + G | Live Grep text recursively in the active directory (uses rg + fzf) |
| Ctrl + J | Ctrl + J | Jump to any directory using zoxide history database |
| Ctrl + U | Ctrl + U | Swap the left and right panel directories |
| = | = | Sync the inactive panel to the active panel's directory |
| Ctrl + Y | Ctrl + Y | Copy the active panel path to the clipboard |
| : | : | Open Command Line prompt to execute shell commands, cd, or quit (q, exit) |
| / | / | Open Interactive Filter prompt (uses fuzzy matching to filter active list in real-time) |
| ~ | ~ | Jump directly to your Home (~) folder |
| R | R | Refresh both panels |
| Esc / q / F10 | Esc / q | Close popups / Exit the application |
| Ctrl + C | Ctrl + C | Hard exit application immediately |
- F1: Help manual / documentation popup
- F2 / Ctrl + I: File/folder Properties (size, permissions, owner, timestamps)
- F3 / v: Full screen file text/hex viewer
- F4 / e: Edit file (suspends TUI, opens your default
$EDITORornano) - F5 / c: Copy selected/tagged file(s) or directory to the other panel
- F6 / m: Move/Rename selected/tagged item(s)
- F7 / n: Create a new directory
- F8 / d: Delete selected/tagged item(s) (recursive) with confirmation
- F9: Open Interactive Dropdown Menu Bar (Left, File, Command, Options, Right)
- Alt + C: Compress selected/tagged item(s) to a
.zipor.tar.gzarchive - Alt + X: Extract selected archive file (.zip/.tar/.tar.gz) to the opposite panel
Background operations: Copy, Move and Delete run on a background thread with a live progress bar (current item, byte/file counts, percentage). The UI never freezes on large files, deep trees, or slow/network mounts. Press Esc or c to cancel an operation in progress. Per-item errors are collected and reported at the end instead of aborting on the first failure.
Live updates: Panels refresh automatically when files change on disk (via a filesystem watcher), so external changes appear without pressing R.
Beyond the classic two-pane view you can split the workspace into more panes, tiling-window-manager style. Keyboard-first, mouse-friendly.
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| | | Split the focused pane into a left | right pair |
| - | Split the focused pane into a top / bottom pair |
| Ctrl + W | Close the focused pane (refuses the last one; collapses to its sibling) |
| Tab | Cycle focus across all panes |
| Ctrl + ← ↑ ↓ → | Resize the focused pane |
Mouse works everywhere, while the keyboard stays first-class:
- Click a pane to focus it and select the item under the cursor; click the already-selected item to open it (enter directory / open file).
- Wheel scrolls the selection in the pane under the cursor.
- Drag a seam between panes to resize the split live.
- Click the header row to open the menu bar.
To make rc automatically change your terminal's working directory (cd) to the last visited folder upon exit, add the following wrapper function to your shell configuration:
Add this to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc:
function rc() {
local tmp="$(mktemp -t rc-cwd.XXXXXX)"
command rc --write-last-dir="$tmp" "$@"
if [ -f "$tmp" ]; then
local dir="$(cat "$tmp")"
rm -f "$tmp"
if [ -d "$dir" ] && [ "$dir" != "$(pwd)" ]; then
cd "$dir"
fi
fi
}Add this to ~/.config/fish/functions/rc.fish:
function rc
set tmp (mktemp -t rc-cwd.XXXXXX)
command rc --write-last-dir=$tmp $argv
if test -f "$tmp"
set cl_dir (cat $tmp)
rm -f $tmp
if test -d "$cl_dir"; and test "$cl_dir" != (pwd)
cd $cl_dir
end
end
endSettings are loaded automatically at startup and saved to:
~/.config/rust-commander/config.ini
show_hidden:trueorfalsesort_by:name,size, ortimekeybindings:standardorvimdefault_editor: system command to open files (e.g.nano,vim,code)
Press Ctrl+S (or o in Vim mode) to open the interactive settings dialog. Use Up/Down to navigate rows, Space to toggle settings, and Enter to save changes to disk.
You can map custom key combinations to run arbitrary shell commands. Define them under the [custom_actions] section in your config.ini file:
[custom_actions]
ctrl+r = cargo run
ctrl+x = chmod +x %f
alt+w = code %f%f: Absolute path to the currently highlighted file.%d: Absolute path to the active panel directory.%n: Filename of the currently highlighted file.%m: Space-separated list of absolute paths of all marked (tagged) files.
rc provides first-class integrations with popular CLI search and navigation tools. These commands run interactively in the foreground and immediately apply their selection back to the file manager:
- Fuzzy Find Files (
Ctrl+F): Recursively finds files in the active directory usingfd(or fallbacks) andfzf. Selecting a file highlights and positions the cursor on it inrc. - Live Grep Text (
Ctrl+G): Greps files recursively in the active directory usingrgandfzf. Selecting a search result navigates to and highlights the target file. - Zoxide Jump (
Ctrl+J): Opens interactive database navigation usingzoxide query -i. Selecting a directory jumps the active panel to that folder.
Note
Make sure fzf, fd/find, rg, and/or zoxide are installed and available in your shell's PATH.
- Syntax Highlighting: Code and config files are natively highlighted inside the preview window using
syntectwith a pure-Rust background parser (compiled usingregex-fancyfor build compatibility). Highlighting states are lazy-loaded to ensure zero application startup latency. - Git Diff Preview: If a file is modified (staged or unstaged) in a Git workspace,
rcwill automatically show a gorgeous, colorizedgit diffinside the preview pane. - Archive Listings: For
.zip,.tar.gz,.tgz, and.xzfiles, the preview window will display a tree/list of files contained in the archive without needing to extract it first. - Markdown Rendering: Markdown files (
.md) are automatically rendered with terminal-safe ANSI escape sequences—highlighting titles, bolding headers, colorizing bullets, and text formatting. - Pixel-Perfect Image Preview: Renders PNG, JPG, GIF, WebP, and other formats directly inside the terminal preview panel using
ratatui-image. Automatically uses the best available protocol for your terminal (Kitty Graphics Protocol, Sixel, or half-blocks fallback). - Virtual Scroll Rendering: Snappy performance even in directories with 10k+ files.
rcuses viewport-based list virtualization so only visible files are formatted, styled, canonicalized, or checked for Git statuses. - Debounced File Watcher: A built-in filesystem event watcher debounces multiple updates in quick succession, preventing rendering floods during batch operations.
- Header Bar: Shows the app title, keybinding configuration status.
- Twin File Lists: Active frame is outlined in Cyan (
Color::Rgb(6, 182, 212)), inactive is slate gray (Color::Rgb(71, 85, 105)). - Color Coding:
- 📁 Directories: Cyan/SkyBlue text (
Color::Rgb(56, 189, 248)) - ⚙️ Executables: Green text (
Color::Rgb(74, 222, 128)) - 🔗 Symlinks: Rose/Pink text (
Color::Rgb(244, 63, 94)) - 📄 Standard Files: Off-white/Gray text (
Color::Rgb(226, 232, 240))
- 📁 Directories: Cyan/SkyBlue text (
- Live Preview Pane: When active, the opposite panel renders file tree summaries for directories, or text summaries/hex representations for files. Cached dynamically for buttery-smooth scrolls.