fsnav - Fast Terminal File System Navigator

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

Search & Preview

Bookmarks

Split-Pane View

Root Mode Features

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!