Who are these for? People who use the terminal but don’t like running shell commands?
OK sorry for throwing shade. If you use one of these, honestly, what features do you use that make it worthwhile?
I used mc
many yeas ago until I learned CLI utils well enough to use them efficiently. I think, it is the main point: you get a tool that does not require a lot of time to start using it. But in most usage scenarios TUI FMs are less effective than CLI.
I tend to write scripts for anything more than a one liner. It takes time up front, but I have so many now they become their own one liners
It’s really annoying navigating a filesystem in the shell.
Either you remember exactly where a file is located, have a reference, or you’re going to be doing a lot of “ls, cd, ls, cd”.
That’s not necessarily true. There are programs/plugins like scd
in zshell
which make your life easier.
https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/blob/master/plugins/scd/README.md
As someone who uses nnn (occasionally lf) all the time, terminal file managers make navigation (especially bookmarking) easier.
Think Nemo’s my default file manager but with GUI file managers I find it hard to switch contexts. I always used to have two splits open with Nemo but if I need to open a new context I’d have to open another instance of Nemo and then I gotta switch between the instances now.
Now, nnn gives me 4 contexts, which can be easily switched between using 1-4. I’ve added zoxide within nnn to pretty much jump to any directory within my system. This isn’t really possible with a GUI file manager. Guess you can add integration to other tools as well to the list of pros of a terminal file manager.
File preview needs a mention as well. It’s easier when you can quickly glance a file and move on instead of opening it.