fsnav 0.4.0

A fast terminal file navigator with advanced features: search, preview, bookmarks, and split-pane view
fsnav-0.4.0 is not a library.

fsnav - Fast Terminal File System Navigator

Crates.io CI

A fast and intuitive terminal-based file system navigator written in Rust, featuring advanced search, file preview, bookmarks, and split-pane navigation.

🚀 v0.4.0 - Enhanced Navigation Edition

The latest release brings powerful navigation features that transform how you explore your file system:

  • 🔍 Smart Search: Find files instantly with regex support and content search
  • 👁️ Live Preview: See file contents without opening them
  • 📑 Bookmarks: Save and jump to your favorite directories
  • 🔲 Split-Pane: Navigate two directories simultaneously

Features

Core Navigation

  • 🚀 Fast Navigation: Instant directory traversal with keyboard shortcuts
  • 🔍 Visual Indicators: Clear distinction between files and directories
  • 🎯 Intuitive Controls: Arrow keys for navigation, Enter to open, Backspace to go up
  • 🖥️ Quick Shell Access: Press S or Ctrl+D to open a shell in the current directory
  • 📊 Permission Manager: Interactive chmod/chown interface for root users
  • 🎨 Pattern Selection: Select multiple files using glob patterns or regex

New in v0.4.0

  • 🔎 Advanced Search (Ctrl+F)

    • Real-time search as you type
    • Regex pattern support
    • Search within file contents
    • Navigate between results

  • 📄 File Preview Panel (Ctrl+P)

    • Split-screen preview
    • Syntax-aware text display
    • Binary hex viewer
    • Directory contents preview

  • 📌 Bookmarks System (Ctrl+B)

    • Save frequently accessed directories
    • Keyboard shortcuts for quick access
    • Persistent storage
    • Usage tracking

  • 📊 Split-Pane View (F2)

    • Dual directory navigation
    • Vertical/horizontal layouts
    • Independent or synchronized navigation

Installation

From crates.io

cargo install fsnav

From source

git clone https://github.com/AlexArtaud-Dev/fsnav
cd fsnav
cargo build --release
# Binary will be in target/release/fsnav

Usage

# Start in current directory
fsnav

# Start in specific directory
fsnav /path/to/directory

# Show help
fsnav --help

# Show version
fsnav --version

Keyboard Shortcuts

Standard Navigation

Key Action
↑ / ↓ Navigate up/down
→ / Enter Enter selected directory
← / Backspace Go to parent directory
S / Ctrl+D Open shell in current directory
Esc / q Quit application

Search & Preview

Key Action
Ctrl+F Enter search mode
Ctrl+N Next search result
Ctrl+P Previous search result (in search) / Toggle preview panel
Ctrl+R Toggle regex mode (in search)
Ctrl+C Toggle case-sensitive search
Ctrl+G Search in file contents

Bookmarks

Key Action
Ctrl+B Open bookmarks manager
Ctrl+G Quick jump to bookmark
a Add current directory (in bookmarks)
d Delete bookmark (in bookmarks)
r Rename bookmark (in bookmarks)

Split-Pane View

Key Action
F2 Toggle split-pane mode
Tab Switch between panes
F5 Sync directories
F6 Toggle vertical/horizontal layout
+ / - Adjust split ratio

Root Mode Features

Key Action
s Enter selection mode
Space Toggle selection (in selection mode)
p Pattern selection mode
c Open chmod interface
o Open chown interface

Screenshots

Search Mode with Results

📂 /home/user/projects
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔍 Search: config     [3 results]
[Regex: OFF] [Case: OFF] [Content: OFF]
───────────────────────────────────────
 > 📄 config.toml ← [1/3]
   📄 .config
   📁 configs/
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Ctrl+N/P: Next/Prev | Ctrl+R: Regex | Esc: Exit

File Preview Panel

📂 /home/user/docs          │ Preview
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━│━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   📁 ../                   │ Size: 2.4 KB
 > 📄 README.md             │ Perms: rw-r--r--
   📄 notes.txt             │ Type: text/markdown
   📁 images/               │ ─────────────────
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━│ # Project Title
↑↓: Navigate | Ctrl+P: Hide│ 
                           │ This is a sample
                           │ README file with
                           │ markdown content.

Split-Pane Navigation

📂 /home/user              │ 📂 /home/user/projects
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━│━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 > 📁 Documents/           │    📁 ../
   📁 Downloads/           │  > 📁 src/
   📁 Pictures/            │    📁 tests/
   📁 projects/            │    📄 Cargo.toml
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━│━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Left Pane Active]         Tab: Switch | F5: Sync

Bookmarks Manager

📑 BOOKMARKS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[h] Home         /home/user       (accessed 42 times)
[d] Downloads    /home/user/Downloads (accessed 15 times)
[p] Projects     /home/user/projects  (accessed 38 times)
[r] Root         /                    (accessed 5 times)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Available shortcuts: a, b, c, e, f, g...
a: Add | d: Delete | r: Rename | Esc: Back

Configuration

fsnav stores its configuration and bookmarks in ~/.config/fsnav/:

  • bookmarks.json - Saved bookmarks with usage statistics

Performance

  • Instant Search: Find files in milliseconds even in large directories
  • Lazy Loading: Preview only loads when needed
  • Efficient Scrolling: Smooth navigation through thousands of files
  • Memory Efficient: Minimal memory footprint with smart caching

Compatibility

  • Operating Systems: Linux, macOS, BSD
    ⚠️ Windows is not supported directly. Please use WSL
  • Terminal Emulators: All modern terminals supporting ANSI escape codes
  • Rust Version: 1.70.0 or later

Building from Source

# Debug build
cargo build

# Release build (optimized)
cargo build --release

# Run tests
cargo test

# Run directly
cargo run

Project Structure

fsnav/
├── src/
│   ├── main.rs           # Entry point and terminal setup
│   ├── navigator.rs      # Core navigation logic
│   ├── file_entry.rs     # File/directory data structures
│   ├── permissions.rs    # Chmod interface
│   ├── ownership.rs      # Chown interface
│   ├── ui.rs            # Rendering and UI components
│   ├── search.rs        # Search functionality (v0.4.0)
│   ├── preview.rs       # File preview system (v0.4.0)
│   ├── bookmarks.rs     # Bookmarks manager (v0.4.0)
│   └── split_pane.rs    # Split-pane view (v0.4.0)
├── Cargo.toml
├── README.md
├── CHANGELOG.md
└── LICENSE-MIT

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

  1. Fork the repository
  2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
  3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
  4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
  5. Open a Pull Request

License

This project is licensed under the MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

Acknowledgments

  • Built with crossterm for terminal manipulation
  • Uses serde for configuration serialization
  • Regex support via regex

Author

Alexandre Artaud - @AlexArtaud-Dev - Software Engineer

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md for a detailed list of changes between versions.

Roadmap

✅ v0.4.0 - Enhanced Navigation (Released!)

  • Search functionality with regex support
  • File preview panel
  • Bookmarks/favorites system
  • Split-pane view for dual directory navigation

v0.5.0 - File Operations (In Progress)

  • Copy/Cut/Paste operations (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+V)
  • Safe delete with trash support
  • Bulk rename with pattern replacement
  • Archive creation/extraction (zip, tar, gz)

v0.6.0 - Customization

  • Configuration file support (~/.config/fsnav/config.toml)
  • Vim-like keybindings option
  • Custom color themes
  • Plugin system for extensions

Future Features

  • Network drive support (SMB, SSH/SFTP)
  • File filtering by extension/size/date
  • Advanced symlink visualization
  • Integration with system clipboard
  • File tagging system
  • Quick actions menu (F-keys)
  • Terminal multiplexer integration
  • Git integration with status indicators

Star History

If you find fsnav useful, please consider giving it a star on GitHub!