broot vs nnn
broot
github.comnnn
github.comSide by side
| Figure | broot | nnn |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · File Manager Software | 7.8 (#55) | 8.7 (#6) |
| Dual-pane view | Yes | No |
| File operations | Built-in operations include moving, copying, removing, and creating directories, and users can add shortcuts. | It can analyze disk usage, batch rename, launch apps, pick files, and copy, move, delete, archive, and link selections. |
| License | The GitHub repository lists the MIT license. | The GitHub repository identifies the project license as BSD-2-Clause. |
| Navigation | Users can search for a directory and return to the shell with that directory selected as the current location. | It supports contexts, sessions, bookmarks, directory marks, and remote mounts through sshfs or rclone. |
| Platforms | The installation page says Broot works on Linux, Mac, and Windows 10 or later; it notes that some systems may require compiling from source or using a third-party repository. | The project says nnn runs on Linux, macOS, Android through Termux, Cygwin, and WSL, among other environments. |
| Purpose | Broot is a command-line tool for navigating directories, finding files, and launching commands. | nnn is a full-featured terminal file manager. |
| Search | Search supports regular expressions, file content searches, and combined patterns with logical operators. | It supports search-as-you-type and fuzzy, regex, and string filters. |
| Support | The project directs users to a Miaou chat room and GitHub issues for questions and bug reports. | The project invites users to discuss new ideas or enhancement requests in GitHub Discussions. |
Plans
In their own words
nnn
nnn is a terminal file manager designed to be small, fast and nearly zero-configuration. It handles copying, moving, deleting, archiving and linking selections, alongside batch renaming, disk-usage analysis, app launching and file picking. Navigation includes contexts, sessions, bookmarks and directory marks, while search options include instant filtering, fuzzy matching, regular expressions and string filters. It provides directory and text previews, and can create, list, extract and mount archives. Plugins can add functions such as live previews, disk mounting, file comparison and uploads. Remote mounts require optional sshfs or rclone dependencies. The project says nnn typically needs less than 3.5 MB of resident memory; it has no configuration file and uses defaults, with optional environment-variable settings. It is free and open source under the BSD-2-Clause license, and is listed for Android, Linux, macOS and Windows. The project offers packages and a statically linked binary, or users can compile it from source.