I have spent a few days looking for a file browser to replace ranger. After testing vifm i found a minimalistic file manager named Cfiles. Can this be the one? Github for Cfiles
Transcript (English)
Hi everyone, this is Cristian Herrera. Welcome to my personal blog. Today I’m going to talk about a file manager called Cfiles. I’ve been looking for a file manager or more like a file browser. I’ve been using ranger, I’ve been using Midnight Commander—actually I’ve been using Midnight Commander a lot since I started with Linux. It’s a great file manager, but it doesn’t preview files while browsing, which ranger does.
I tried ranger and it’s okay once you learn tricks like @ to open files with another app, but I don’t like that it’s written in Python—I’ve had bad experiences with Python versions and ugly code. I tried vifm; I like Vim, but vifm was sluggish in preview mode and configs weren’t in standard places. Then I found Cfiles—a project by someone learning C. It’s minimalistic, written in C, uses xdg-open to open files, so you don’t need per-app “open with” configs like MC/ranger/vifm. It has VI key bindings. It’s in AUR; I install with yay -S cfiles.
Config lives in header files (like suckless tools). I leave defaults; PDF preview exists but is buggy. You can use w3m or ueberzug for image display—ueberzug is fast and doesn’t block navigation. Key bindings: j/k/h/l to navigate, Enter to open, i for info, space to select, u to unselect all, y to yank/copy, d to delete (small d to trash, D to delete), a rename, e edit selection list, g/G top/bottom.
Demo notes: PDF preview often crashes; sometimes it works, sometimes not. w3m image preview leaves artifacts but crashes less than ueberzug for PDFs. Selection can be edited with e; copy files with y; unselect with u. Delete with d/D. It’s fast compared to vifm’s preview delays.
Bugs: PDF preview crashes; w3m leaves garbage on screen. I hope the developer continues; I might help, but I’m rusty in C. I’ll also look into running scripts with P/open-with equivalents. I plan another video on coloring man pages with terminfo/termcap. Like/subscribe/comment—thumbs down also helps the algorithm; I’m doing this to document, not for money.