noice

A fork of the noice file browser to make it more friendly towards major distros (which suck more by some standards).

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Why fork?
• Default features
• Fork toppings
• Installation
• Usage
• Keyboard shortcuts
• File type abbreviations
• Help
• Change file associations

Introduction

noice is a blazing-fast terminal file browser with easy keyboard shortcuts for navigation, opening files and running tasks. noice is developed with terminal based systems in mind. However, the incredible user-friendliness and speed make it a perfect utility on modern distros. Navigate to /usr/bin from your regular file browser and noice to feel the difference.

The only issue with noice is hard-coded file association. There is no config file (better performance and simpler to maintain) and you have to modify the source to change associations (see how to change file associations). This fork solves the problem by adding the flexibility of using the default desktop opener at runtime. There are several other improvements too (see fork-toppings).

Have fun with it! PRs are welcome. Check out #1.

Why fork?

I chose to fork noice because:

• one can argue my approach deviates from the goal of the original project - keep the utility suckless. In my opinion evolution is the taste of time.
• I would like to have a bit of control on what features are added in the name of desktop integration. A feature-bloat is the last thing in my mind.

Default features

• Super-easy navigation
• Open files with default-associated programs
• Jump to home directory
• Filter contents in current directory
• Show/hide hidden files
• Sort entries by time modified (newest to oldest)
• Spawn a shell in current directory
• Run top
• Open a file with vim or less

Fork toppings

• Behaviour and navigation
  • Detail view with file type, size and number of entries in dir (default: disabled)
  • Case-insensitive alphabetic content listing instead of upper case first
  • Roll over at the first and last entries of a directory (with Up/Down keys)
  • Sort entries by file size (largest to smallest)
• File associations

  • Environment variable NOICE_OPENER to override all associations and open all files with your desktop environments default file opener. Examples:

    export NOICE_OPENER=xdg-open
    export NOICE_OPENER=gnome-open
    export NOICE_OPENER=gvfs-open
    

  • Selective file associations (ignored if NOICE_OPENER is set):

    • Associate plain text files with vim (using file command)
    • Remove video file associations (to each his own favourite video player)
    • Associate common audio mimes with lightweight fmedia
    • Associate PDF files with zathura
    • Removed less as default file opener
    • Use environment variable NOICE_FALLBACK_OPENER to open other non-associated files
• Compilation
  • Use -O3 for compilation, fixed warnings
  • Added compilation flag -march=native
  • Remove generated config.h on make clean
  • strip the final binary

Installation

noice needs a curses implementation and standard libc.

Download the latest master or clone this repository. Compile and install:

$ make
$ sudo make install

No plans of packaging at the time.

Usage

Start noice (default: current directory):

$ noice [path_to_dir]

> indicates the currently selected entry.

Keyboard shortcuts

Key	Function
Down, j, Ctrl-n	next entry
Up, k, Ctrl-p	previous entry
>, Enter, l	open file or enter dir
<, Backspace, h	parent dir
Page Down, Ctrl-d	one page down
Page Up, Ctrl-u	one page up
Home, Ctrl-a, ^	jump to first dir entry
End, Ctrl-e, $	jump to last dir entry
~	jump to home dir
/, &	filter dir contents
c	show change dir prompt
d	toggle detail view
.	toggle hide dot files
s	toggle sort by file size
t	toggle sort by modified time
!	spawn a shell in current dir
e	edit entry in vim
p	open entry with less pager
z	run top
Ctrl-l	redraw window
q	quit noice

File type abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used in the detail view:

Symbol	File Type
B	Block Device
C	Character Device
D	Directory
E	Executable
F	Fifo
L	Symbolic Link
R	Regular File
S	Socket

Help

$ man noice

Change file associations

If you want to set custom applications for certain mime types, or change the ones set already (e.g. vim, fmedia, zathura), modify the assocs structure in config.def.h (it's easy). Then re-compile and install.