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Peach Commander v0.2.0 (beta)

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@github-actions github-actions released this 01 Aug 07:29
· 106 commits to main since this release
v0.2.0
cc8f93c

The second beta. Colour themes are the headline — including a Norton Commander palette in the real CGA colours — plus a formatter system you can extend, a CSV viewer, and a pile of fixes to the viewer, the Settings window and the modal dialogs.

Themes

Peach Commander can now take on a whole palette in one step, under Settings ▸ Colors ▸ Theme.

  • Norton Commander — the blue-and-cyan look of the 1986 original, in its authentic CGA values. The cursor bar inverts to dark text on cyan the way the original drew it; marked files keep their yellow.
  • Midnight — dark without being grey: deep indigo panels, soft blue-grey text, amber for marked files.
  • Light / Dark — pin either built-in palette regardless of what macOS is doing.
  • System (default) — no theme, and the default. If you never touch this menu, nothing about the app's appearance changes.

A theme brings its own light/dark base, so dialogs, sheets and scrollers match it rather than staying in the opposite appearance.

Write your own. Drop an .ini into the themes folder inside your configuration folder — the Themes Folder… button creates it and leaves a commented example listing every colour. Name the handful you care about, inherit the rest with Base = light or Base = dark, and it appears in the Theme menu without restarting. A mistake in the file costs you that one line, not the theme.

[Theme]
Name = My Midnight
Base = dark

[Colors]
ListBackground = #101020
ListText       = #C8C8E0

Plugins can follow along. The plugin ABI now publishes the palette, so a plugin's own views can match the host instead of standing out. The bundled Disk Map, Notes and AI chat panels already do. This is a pure addition — plugins built against the previous SDK keep working unchanged.

Also new

  • A CSV/TSV viewer as a bundled plugin — column alignment, header row, large files.
  • Formatting is now a real system. JSON, XML, YAML and more, extensible per file type: point an extension at any command-line formatter you already use, or ship one in a plugin.
  • YAML syntax highlighting, plus a deliberately conservative YAML tidy that will not reorder your keys.
  • Find in rendered Markdown and HTML in the viewer, via WebKit's own search.
  • Copying into an archive now asks first, and F6 into an archive actually moves.

Fixes worth calling out

  • A modal dialog closed with the red button or ⌘W no longer freezes the app — and the crash that the freeze had been hiding is fixed too.
  • The Settings window is resizable, its pages scroll, and the duplicated Plugins entry is gone.
  • The viewer no longer swallows ⌘ shortcuts; ⌘C copies in every representation, and rendered Markdown/HTML resizes with the window.
  • The panel status bar truncates instead of wrapping — a long path used to push "Free: …" out of the bar.
  • Plugins are genuinely universal now. In v0.1.0 the app ran on Intel while none of its plugins could load; the release now fails rather than shipping a single-architecture binary.

Getting it running

  1. Download PeachCommander.dmg below, open it, and drag Peach Commander onto Applications.
  2. The first launch is blocked by macOS — this beta is deliberately not code-signed or notarized. You allow it once:
    • macOS 15 Sequoia and later: double-click once and dismiss the warning, then go to System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway. Apple removed the Control-click shortcut for unsigned software in macOS 15, so right-clicking does not help here.
    • macOS 13 Ventura / 14 Sonoma: right-click the app ▸ Open, then confirm.
  3. Optionally grant Full Disk Access so Peach Commander can reach everywhere Finder can.

The installation guide walks through all of it with screenshots.

What's in the box

  • Universal binary — native on both Apple Silicon and Intel, app and plugins.
  • Requires macOS 13 or later.
  • 13 plugins bundled and active: Git, Archive, WebDAV, iCloud Drive, Disk Map, System Monitor, Task Manager, Uninstaller, Log Viewer, Notes, CSV Lister, AI Assistant and AI Column.
  • 19 languages, UI and in-app help — the theme settings and their documentation included.
  • Passwords live in the macOS Keychain only, crash reports stay local, and the app does not phone home.

Known limitations

Still a beta. It does a lot and is genuinely useful day to day, but things are moving — the plugin SDK in particular can still change.

  • Not code-signed or notarized, hence the first-launch step above.
  • Auto-update (Sparkle) is planned but not wired up yet — you update by downloading a newer build.
  • Themes colour the panels and the app's own windows. Checkboxes, popup buttons, the toolbar icons and system dialogs stay in macOS colours: those are drawn by AppKit, and restyling them would mean re-implementing the controls.
  • Very large ZIP64 archives aren't handled by the built-in reader.
  • Changing file attributes over SFTP has no effect in this version.
  • Panels notice outside changes on a short (~2 s) delay; F2 / Ctrl+R refreshes immediately.

The full list is in the app under Help ▸ Known limitations.

License

Peach Commander is open source under the Apache License 2.0 — free to use, modify and redistribute, including commercially, as long as you keep the license and notice and state your changes. Third-party attributions are in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

Feedback

Bugs and ideas: open an issue. Full changelog: v0.1.0...v0.2.0

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