nnn - supercharge your productivity!

type-to-nav & du (click to see demo video)

Introduction

nnn (or n³) is a full-featured terminal file manager. It's tiny and nearly 0-config with an incredible performance.

nnn can analyze disk usage, batch rename, launch apps and pick files. The plugin repository has tons of plugins and documentation to extend the capabilities further e.g. preview hovered, (un)mount disks, find & list, file/dir diff, upload files. There's an independent (neo)vim plugin.

It runs smoothly on the Pi, Termux (Android), Linux, macOS, BSD, Haiku, Cygwin, WSL, across DEs and GUI utilities or a strictly CLI environment.

Black magic! 🕶️

• Load, sort, filter thousands of files instantly
• Type to navigate with automatic dir selection
• Select files from anywhere (not just a single dir)
• Never lose context - start where you quit nnn
• Edit and preview markdown, man page, html
• Open a file and auto-advance to the next
• Export (filtered) list of visible files
• find/fd/grep/ripgrep/fzf from nnn and list in nnn
• Unlimited bookmarks, plugins, cmds with custom hotkeys
• Write a plugin in any language you know
• Configure the middle mouse click to do anything
• Fuzzy search subtree and open a file (or its parent dir)
• Load four dirs with custom settings at once
• Notifications on cp, mv, rm completion
• Auto-sync selection to system clipboard
• Open text files detached in another pane/tab/window
• Create files/dirs/duplicates with parents (like mkdir -p)
• Toggle hidden with ., visit HOME with ~, last dir with -
• Pin a frequently visited dir at runtime
• Mount any cloud storage service in a few keypresses
• Mount and modify archives
• Filter filtered entries
• Sort by modification, access and inode change time
• Access selection from another instance of nnn
• Compile out/in features with make options
• Watch matrix text fly or read fortune messages
• Configure in 5 minutes!

Features

• Frugal
  • Typically needs less than 3.5MB resident memory
  • Works with 8-bit colors
  • Disk-IO sensitive (few disk reads and writes)
  • No FPU usage (all integer maths, even for file size)
  • Minimizes screen refresh with fast line redraws
  • Tiny binary (typically less than 100KB)
• Portable
  • Statically-linked binary available
  • Language-agnostic plugins
  • Minimal library deps, easy to compile
  • Compile in/out features with make variables
  • No config file, minimal config with sensible defaults
  • Widely available on many packagers
  • Unicode support
• Quality
  • Privacy-aware (no unconfirmed user data collection)
  • POSIX-compliant, follows Linux kernel coding style
  • Highly optimized, static analysis integrated code
• Modes
  • Light (default), detail
  • Disk usage analyzer (block/apparent)
  • File picker, (neo)vim plugin
• Navigation
  • Type-to-nav mode with dir auto-select
  • Contexts (aka tabs/workspaces) with custom colors
  • Sessions, bookmarks with hotkeys; pin and visit a dir
  • Remote mounts (needs sshfs, rclone)
  • Familiar shortcuts (arrows, ~, -, @), quick reference
  • CD on quit (easy shell integration)
  • Auto-advance on opening files
• Search
  • Instant filtering with search-as-you-type
  • Regex (POSIX/PCRE) and string (default) filters
  • Subtree search plugin to open or edit files
• Sort
  • Ordered pure numeric names by default (visit /proc)
  • Case-insensitive version (aka natural) sort
  • By file name, access/change/mod (default) time, size, extension
  • Reverse sort
• Mimes
  • Open with desktop opener or specify a custom opener
  • Preview hovered files in FIFO-based previewer
  • Create, list, extract, mount (FUSE based) archives
  • Option to open all text files in EDITOR
• Information
  • Detailed file information
  • Media information plugin
• Convenience
  • Run plugins and custom commands with hotkeys
  • FreeDesktop compliant trash (needs trash-cli)
  • Cross-dir file/all/range selection
  • Batch renamer for selection or dir
  • Display a list of files from stdin
  • Copy (as), move (as), delete, archive, link selection
  • Dir updates, notification on cp, mv, rm completion
  • Copy file paths to system clipboard on select
  • Create (with parents), rename, duplicate (anywhere) files and dirs
  • Launch GUI apps, run commands, spawn a shell, toggle executable
  • Hovered file set as $nnn at prompt and spawned shell
  • Lock terminal after configurable idle timeout
  • Basic support for screen readers and braille displays

Quickstart

1. Install nnn and deps (if you need any). All files are opened with the desktop opener by default.
2. Add option -e to your alias to open text files in $VISUAL/$EDITOR/ vi. Open detached if you wish.
3. Configure cd on quit.
4. Install plugins.
5. Use option -x to copy selected file paths to system clipboard and show notis on cp, mv, rm completion.
6. For a CLI-only environment, customize and use plugin nuke with option -c (overrides -e).

Don't memorize! Arrows (or h j k l), /, q suffice. Tab creates, cycles contexts. ? lists shortcuts.

Developers

• Arun Prakash Jana (Copyright © 2016-2020)
• 0xACE
• Anna Arad
• KlzXS
• Léo Villeveygoux
• Maxim Baz
• Todd Yamakawa
• and other contributors

Visit the ToDo list to contribute or see the features in progress.

Elsewhere

• Wikipedia
• ArchWiki
• FOSSMint
• gHacks Tech News
• Hacker News [1] [2]
• It's FOSS
• LinuxLinks [1] [2] [3]
• Suckless Rocks
• Ubuntu Full Circle Magazine - Issue 135