file-handle

A lean lib to manage files: open with default apps, reveal in managers or terminals, or trash files.

Design goals

file-handle was created to provide a minimal and dependency-conscious way to handle common desktop interactions. This project focuses on:

Minimalism: Small dependency footprint using native commands where possible.
Modernity: Clean, type-safe API designed for the latest Rust editions.
Flexibility: Feature flags to ensure you only compile what you actually use.

Usage

Important note 🗒️ for first-time users

If you simply add file-handle to your dependencies without specifying any features, you will not see any methods available under FileHandle::.

To keep compile time fast and the dependency tree as small as possible, file-handle is entirely opt-in. You must explicitly enable the features you want to use, or enable the all feature to get everything.

Feature flags

Flag	Method Enabled	Description
`open`	`FileHandle::open_with_default(path)`	Opens the file using the system's default application associated with its file extension.
`show`	`FileHandle::show(path)`	Opens the system's file manager. If the path is a file, it opens the parent folder and selects the file. If it's a directory, it opens that directory. (Uses zbus on Linux)
`terminal`	`FileHandle::open_terminal(path)`	Opens the system's default terminal emulator at the specified path.
`trash`	`FileHandle::trash(path)`	Moves the specified file or directory to the system trash/recycle bin. (Uses the trash crate)
`all`	All methods	Enables open, show, terminal, and trash all at once.

Open-source, with care

This project is lovingly built and maintained by volunteers.
We hope it helps streamline your API development.
Please understand that the project has its own direction — while we welcome feedback, it might not fit every edge case 🌱

Acknowledgements

Depends on thiserror, url, zbus, trash, In addition, tempfile for test automation.