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Preamble

Midnight Commander has always been my favorite terminal file manager. It's feature-rich, fast, and actually tries to be a file manager compared to modern alternatives. However, there are quite some features that I never used, and I couldn't configure a Vim bindings that works well for me.

With OpenCode, I can finally make my own terminal file manager. I borrowed the main design concepts from Midnight Commander and some behavior from NVim-Tree file explorer.

I hope you would like it, at least I do. Since this project is entirely vibe-coded, so I'm not going to accept PR from the community, but feel free to open issues and fork it.

Features

• Dual pane — navigate two directories side by side, copy/move between them
• Tree expand — expand/collapse directories inline with l/h, nerd font icons
• Vim keybindings — j/k/h/l, g/G, ctrl+f/ctrl+u
• Visual selection — select ranges with V, operate on multiple files at once
• File operations — copy, cut, paste, delete (with confirmation), rename
• Smart create — a creates a file or directory (trailing / = dir, nested paths supported)
• Fuzzy search — space opens fuzzy search in current dir; :find searches recursively
• Command palette — : opens a command prompt for power-user actions
• Goto — :goto <path> with live directory listing, tab-complete, and ~ expansion
• SSH — browse and operate on remote servers over SFTP via :ssh user@host
• Nerd font icons — file type icons, open/closed folder glyphs
• TokyoNight theme — easy on the eyes

Screenshot

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Requirements

• A terminal with Nerd Fonts support (recommended: JetBrainsMono Nerd Font, FiraCode Nerd Font)
• macOS or Linux

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Installation

One-liner (macOS and Linux)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/duguyue100/midnight-captain/main/install.sh | bash

Downloads the correct pre-built binary for your OS and architecture from the latest GitHub Release and places it at ~/.local/bin/mc. If ~/.local/bin is not in your $PATH, the installer will tell you what to add.

Build from source (local)

Requires Go 1.22+.

git clone https://github.com/duguyue100/midnight-captain
cd midnight-captain
./install.sh --local-build

Runs make build and copies bin/mc to ~/.local/bin/mc.

Manual build

make build   # binary at bin/mc
./bin/mc

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Usage

mc

Launches in the current directory with dual panes.

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Keybindings

Navigation

Key	Action
j / k	Move cursor down / up
ctrl+f / ctrl+u	Half-page down / up
g	Jump to top
G	Jump to bottom
tab	Switch active pane
h	Collapse directory or jump to parent
l / enter	Expand directory inline
o	Navigate into directory (change cwd)
.	Toggle hidden files

Selection

Key	Action
V	Visual select mode — move to extend selection
esc	Cancel / clear selection

File Operations

Key	Action
a	Smart create — trailing / = dir, nested paths supported
r	Rename current file
y	Yank (copy) to clipboard
d	Cut to clipboard
p	Paste into active pane
x	Delete (prompts for confirmation)
e	Open in $EDITOR (or vi). Supports remote file editing (downloads, edits, uploads on save if <100MB)

Search & Commands

Key	Action
space	Fuzzy search in current directory
:	Open command palette
?	Show help overlay
q	Quit

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Commands

Open with :, then type a command.

Command	Description
:ssh user@host	Connect to remote server (SFTP) in active pane
:disconnect	Disconnect SSH, return to local filesystem
:goto <path>	Jump to path with live completion
:find	Recursive fuzzy search from current directory
:refresh	Refresh current directory content
:sort name|size|date	Change sort order
:hidden	Toggle hidden files
:cancel	Cancel an active background operation (copy/move/delete)
:quit	Exit