Strata

Navigate every layer. A fast, keyboard-first file manager for modern Linux desktops.

_{The animation respects reduced-motion preferences. View the static preview.}

Strata combines spatial Miller-column navigation with familiar Grid and Explorer views, instant fuzzy filename search, rich previews, and native Linux desktop integration. It is designed for Omarchy and works on compatible GTK4 Linux environments.

• Features
• Installation
  • AI-assisted installation
  • Manual installation
• Usage and desktop integration
  • Desktop entry
  • Make Strata the Omarchy file manager
  • Network shares
• Theming
  • Follow Omarchy Quattro
  • Bundled themes
  • Custom themes
• Under the hood
• Technical specifications
• Development and documentation
• Contributors
• License

• Three browser modes: navigable Miller columns, a thumbnail Grid, and a sortable Explorer table.
• Keyboard-first control: Vim-style movement, navigation history, location entry, pane filtering, fuzzy search, file operations, and quick previews.
• Fast recursive search: press Ctrl+K to find files and directories by name or path while the tree is still being indexed.
• Rich previews and thumbnails: bounded previews for text, source code, images, camera RAW, PDF, audio, and video, with native parser-backed formats isolated from the application.
• Responsive filesystem work: cancellable directory loading, bounded streaming, incremental monitoring, stable selection, and virtualized large directories.
• Everyday file operations: create folders, rename, cut, copy, paste, trash, permanent delete, sorting, hidden files, pins, and history.
• Remote locations: browse GIO/GVfs locations such as authenticated SMB shares from the location field.
• Adaptive appearance: compact or airy density, six bundled themes, custom themes, and live Omarchy Quattro theme following.
• Updates in the app: opt-in automatic checks, release notes, verified downloads, and in-place installation for release binaries.

Strata currently publishes release archives rather than distribution packages. Arch Linux and Omarchy are the primary supported environments; current binaries require glibc 2.39 or newer and the runtime libraries listed below.

Give this prompt to a coding agent with terminal access:

Install the latest stable Strata release from https://github.com/lgse/strata safely.

Before changing anything:
1. Confirm this is a glibc-based Linux system with a graphical GTK4 environment.
2. Detect whether the machine is x86_64 or aarch64 and select only the matching
   *-unknown-linux-gnu archive from the canonical lgse/strata GitHub release.
3. Show me the runtime packages you need and ask before using sudo or changing
   my default file-manager association.

Then:
- Install the required GTK4, GtkSourceView 5, Poppler GLib, Fontconfig, Bubblewrap,
  FFmpeg/GStreamer, and desktop-integration runtime dependencies using the system
  package manager. Add gvfs-smb only if I want SMB support.
- Download the archive and its matching .sha256 file from the latest GitHub release.
- Verify the checksum with sha256sum --check and verify GitHub Actions provenance
  with `gh attestation verify <archive> --repo lgse/strata`. Stop on any failure;
  never install an unverified binary.
- Extract it and install `strata` to ~/.local/bin/strata without overwriting an
  unrelated file. Ensure ~/.local/bin is on PATH.
- Ask whether I want a per-user desktop entry and inode/directory association;
  if yes, use application ID io.github.lgse.Strata and refresh the desktop database.
- Launch `strata`, report its installed version/source release, and verify the
  desktop association if one was requested. Do not weaken the preview sandbox.

case "$(uname -m)" in
  x86_64)  target=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu ;;
  aarch64) target=aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu ;;
  *) echo "Strata has no prebuilt release for $(uname -m)" >&2; exit 1 ;;
esac
printf 'Use the %s release archive.\n' "$target"
getconf GNU_LIBC_VERSION   # must report glibc 2.39 or newer

On Arch Linux or Omarchy:

sudo pacman -S --needed bubblewrap ffmpeg ffmpegthumbnailer fontconfig \
  gst-libav gst-plugins-good gtk4 gtksourceview5 poppler-glib
# Optional SMB support:
sudo pacman -S --needed gvfs-smb

GTK 4.12 or newer and glibc 2.39 or newer are required. Other glibc-based distributions may work when they provide equivalent runtime libraries, but their package names and binary compatibility vary. Systems with an older glibc must build Strata from source.

From the latest release, download the .tar.gz matching $target and its identically named .sha256 file. Then verify both its digest and signed GitHub Actions provenance:

cd ~/Downloads
archive="strata-<version>-${target}.tar.gz"
sha256sum --check "${archive}.sha256"
gh attestation verify "$archive" --repo lgse/strata
tar -xzf "$archive"

Both verification commands must succeed. Install the binary and confirm it starts:

install -Dm755 "${archive%.tar.gz}/strata" "$HOME/.local/bin/strata"
command -v strata
strata

If command -v fails, add $HOME/.local/bin to your shell's PATH. Every archive contains SOURCE_COMMIT, identifying the exact source revision used by GitHub Actions.

Use Settings → Updates for verified in-app updates, or repeat the download, verification, and install steps for a newer release. To remove a per-user installation:

rm -f ~/.local/bin/strata \
  ~/.local/share/applications/io.github.lgse.Strata.desktop
update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications 2>/dev/null || true

User preferences and custom themes remain under the XDG configuration directories so an uninstall does not destroy personal settings.

Launch Strata with an optional local directory:

strata                 # home directory
strata ~/Documents     # a specific directory

Useful shortcuts include Ctrl+K for recursive search, Ctrl+L for a path or URI, Ctrl+F to filter the current pane, Space for preview, F2 to rename, and Alt+arrow keys for history and parent navigation.

Create a per-user launcher and optionally make Strata the default directory handler:

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/applications
cat > ~/.local/share/applications/io.github.lgse.Strata.desktop <<EOF
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Strata
Comment=Navigate every layer
Exec=$HOME/.local/bin/strata %U
Icon=system-file-manager
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Utility;FileManager;
MimeType=inode/directory;
StartupNotify=true
EOF
update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications
xdg-mime default io.github.lgse.Strata.desktop inode/directory
xdg-mime query default inode/directory

The final command should print io.github.lgse.Strata.desktop.

The XDG association above handles folders opened by applications. On current Lua-based Omarchy releases, also override the stock Nautilus shortcuts in ~/.config/hypr/bindings.lua so Omarchy launches Strata directly.

First inspect the active bindings and back up your user configuration:

omarchy menu keybindings --print | grep -i "file manager"
cp ~/.config/hypr/bindings.lua ~/.config/hypr/bindings.lua.bak.$(date +%s)

Append these overrides to ~/.config/hypr/bindings.lua:

-- Use Strata instead of Nautilus for Omarchy's file-manager shortcuts.
hl.unbind("SUPER + SHIFT + F")
hl.unbind("SUPER + ALT + SHIFT + F")
o.bind("SUPER + SHIFT + F", "File manager", { launch = "strata" })
o.bind("SUPER + ALT + SHIFT + F", "File manager (cwd)",
  "uwsm-app -- strata \"$(omarchy-cmd-terminal-cwd)\"")

The stock shortcut is Super+Shift+F, not Ctrl+Shift+F. To support the Ctrl chord too, first confirm that it is not assigned to another action, then optionally append:

o.bind("CTRL + SHIFT + F", "File manager", { launch = "strata" })

Apply and validate the configuration:

hyprctl reload
hyprctl configerrors
omarchy menu keybindings --print | grep -i "file manager"

hyprctl configerrors should produce no errors. These user overrides survive Omarchy updates; do not edit files under /usr/share/omarchy/.

Press Ctrl+L, enter an address such as smb://server/share, and press Enter. Strata uses GIO/GVfs and prompts for credentials when required. Install your distribution's SMB GVfs backend (gvfs-smb on Arch) to enable SMB browsing.

Open Settings → Theme & appearance from the gear menu or with Ctrl+,. Theme changes apply immediately across the interface.

On Omarchy Quattro, turn on Follow Omarchy under Settings → Theme & appearance. Strata maps the active Omarchy palette to its semantic colors, monitors the current theme, and updates live whenever Omarchy's theme changes.

This integration supports Omarchy Quattro only. The switch is hidden when Strata cannot find a valid Quattro current-theme state; legacy Omarchy theme layouts are not supported.

Choose any included theme from Settings → Theme & appearance: Azure Glow, Tokyo Night, Catppuccin, Everforest, Rosé Pine, or Omarchy Light. Selecting a bundled theme turns off Omarchy following and keeps that theme active across restarts.

Select Add a theme, enter a name, and choose the semantic colors for the background, surfaces, text, accent, danger, muted and highlighted elements, borders, and dimmed text. Strata previews edits live and saves completed themes under Your themes.

Custom themes are stored as shareable TOML files in ~/.config/strata/themes/. See Themes for the schema, file location, and Omarchy color mapping.

Strata walks and indexes the selected directory tree on a background thread, never on GTK's UI thread. Results appear progressively during that walk. Names and relative paths are normalized once as index entries are created, and each query maintains only the best 100 fuzzy-ranked matches instead of sending an unbounded result set to the interface.

Rapid keystrokes are coalesced to the newest query. During indexing, result publication is throttled to 50 ms intervals; the UI consumes those bounded updates on its own timed loop, keeping rendering aligned with responsive frame-sized work. Exact and contiguous matches, word/path boundaries, and names rank ahead of loose path subsequences.

The deliberate tradeoff: this is fast filename and path search, not file-content or metadata search.

Files shown while browsing are untrusted. Image, camera RAW, PDF, thumbnail, and media parsing therefore runs out of process through Bubblewrap, not inside the main Strata process. Each short-lived helper receives namespace isolation, a minimal read-only runtime, exactly one canonicalized input file, private output and temporary directories, no network, and no capabilities. Memory, CPU/wall time, input, file, and parent-side output limits bound the work.

Only media helpers may receive allowlisted GPU render devices, and only for accelerated transcoding; image, PDF, and thumbnail helpers receive no device mounts. Outputs are normalized and bounded, then checked for expected PNG, MP4, or WebM signatures before use. Cancellation or timeout kills the process group and Bubblewrap PID namespace, tearing down descendants. Missing isolation, crashes, malformed output, timeouts, and permission failures all fail closed to a normal icon or Preview unavailable—Strata never silently retries an untrusted native parser without the sandbox.

Plain-text and source previews are different: they stay in process because they do not invoke a native format parser, and reads are capped at 1 MiB. See Preview sandbox for provider ordering, exact mounts, formats, and resource budgets.

Build requirements are the latest stable Rust toolchain, a C toolchain, pkg-config, GTK 4.12+, GtkSourceView 5, Poppler GLib, and Fontconfig. On Arch:

sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel rust bubblewrap ffmpeg ffmpegthumbnailer fontconfig \
  gst-libav gst-plugins-good gtk4 gtksourceview5 poppler-glib
make start-dev        # rebuild and restart as files change
./scripts/check.sh    # format, compile, Clippy, tests, and optional policy checks

Start with CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request. Deeper references:

• Architecture principles
• Preview sandbox
• Performance baseline
• Themes and Omarchy integration
• Unsafe code policy

This image is generated from GitHub contribution data so new contributors appear without a manual README update. Thank you to everyone who reports issues, improves the documentation, tests releases, and contributes code.

Strata is free software licensed under GPL-3.0-or-later. Bundled fonts, icons, and other third-party components retain their own notices in THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.md.