nnn - supercharge your productivity!

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

Introduction

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

nnn is also a du analyzer, an app launcher, a batch renamer and a file picker. The plugin repository has tons of plugins and documentation to extend the capabilities further. You can plug new functionality and play with a hotkey. 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! 🕶️

1. Load, sort, filter thousands of files instantly
2. Type to navigate with automatic dir selection
3. Select files from anywhere (not just a single dir)
4. Edit and preview markdown, man page, html
5. Open a file and auto-advance to the next
6. Export (filtered) list of visible files
7. Find files by mime-type and list in nnn
8. Unlimited bookmarks, plugins, commands with custom hotkeys
9. Write a plugin in any language you know
10. Configure the middle mouse click to do anything
11. Fuzzy search subtree and open the dir of a file
12. Load four dirs with custom settings at once
13. Notifications on cp, mv, rm completion
14. Auto-sync selection to system clipboard
15. Open text files detached in another pane/tab/window
16. Create files/dirs/duplicates with parents (like mkdir -p)
17. Toggle hidden with ., visit HOME with ~, last dir with -
18. Pin a frequently visited dir at runtime
19. Mount any cloud storage service in a few keypresses
20. Mount and modify archives
21. Filter filtered entries
22. Sort files by access time and inode change time
23. Access selection from another instance of nnn
24. Compile out features you don't need
25. Watch matrix text fly or read fortune messages
26. Configure in 5 minutes!

Once installed (instructions below), read the fine manual.

Features

• Resource sensitive
  • 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 app
  • 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

Quickstart

1. Install optional deps (if you need any).
2. Configure cd on quit.
3. Use option -e in your alias to open text files in $VISUAL/$EDITOR/ vi. Open detached if you wish.
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.

Installation

No permission to install packages? Get the statically linked binary from the latest release.

Library dependencies

A curses library with wide char support (e.g. ncursesw), libreadline (optional) and standard libc.

Utility dependencies

Dependency	Installation	Operation
xdg-open (Linux), open(1) (macOS), cygstart (Cygwin), open (Haiku)	base	desktop opener
file, coreutils (cp, mv, rm), xargs	base	file type, copy, move and remove
tar, (un)zip [atool/bsdtar for more formats]	base	create, list, extract bzip2, (g)zip, tar
archivemount, fusermount(3)/umount (macOS)	optional	mount, unmount archives
sshfs, rclone, fusermount(3)/umount (macOS)	optional	mount, unmount remotes
trash-cli	optional	trash files (default action: rm)
vlock (Linux), bashlock (macOS), lock(1) (BSD), peaclock (Haiku)	optional	terminal locker (fallback: cmatrix)
advcpmv (Linux) (integration)	optional	copy, move progress
fortune	optional	random quotes in help screen
$VISUAL (else $EDITOR), $PAGER, $SHELL	optional	fallback vi, less, sh

From a package manager

Install nnn from your package manager. If the version available is dated try an alternative installation method.

Packaging status (expand)

Unlisted packagers:

● CentOS (yum --enablerepo=epel install nnn)
● Milis Linux (mps kur nnn)
● NuTyX (cards install nnn)
● Source Mage (cast nnn)

Release packages

Packages for Arch Linux, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu and a static binary are generated with the latest release.

From source

Download the latest release or clone this repository (risky), install deps and compile. On Ubuntu 18.04:

sudo apt-get install pkg-config libncursesw5-dev libreadline-dev
sudo make strip install

PREFIX is supported, in case you want to install to a different location.

See the developer guides for source verification, compilation notes on the Pi, Cygwin and other tips.

Shell completion

Completion scripts for Bash, Fish and Zsh are available. Refer to your shell's manual for installation instructions.

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

Developers

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

nnn is actively developed. Visit the ToDo list to contribute or see the features in progress.