Broot vs cfiles
Broot
dystroy.orgcfiles
github.comSide by side
| Figure | Broot | cfiles |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Terminal File Managers | 8.6 (#2) | 8.4 (#8) |
| Spec score · File managers | 8.3 (#12) | 7.9 (#18) |
| File operations | Move, copy, remove, and mkdir operations are built in, and users can add shortcuts. | The selection list supports copying, moving, renaming, moving files to trash, and removing selected files. |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| License | The repository is released under the MIT License, with permission to use, copy, modify, publish, distribute, sublicense, and sell the software subject to the license conditions. | The software is licensed under the MIT License, which grants permission to use, copy, modify, publish, distribute, sublicense, and sell copies subject to its terms. |
| Linux support | Yes | Yes |
| macOS support | Yes | Yes |
| Navigation | Users can select a directory and return to the shell with that directory as the current location. | It supports h, j, k, and l navigation keys and offers top, middle, bottom, and page scrolling shortcuts. |
| Preview pane | Yes | Yes |
Plans
In their own words
Broot
Broot is a directory navigator for finding files, browsing folders, and launching commands. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, with a dual-pane layout and synchronized preview panels. Directory overviews respect .gitignore and .ignore files. Search supports relevance ranking, regular expressions, file contents, and logical operators. Users can select a directory and return to the shell with that location active. Built-in file operations include move, copy, remove, and mkdir, and users can add shortcuts. Multiple panels support navigation and moving or copying items between locations, with customizable colors. Preview options include PDF and Office documents through transformers and high-resolution images through Kitty's graphics protocol in Kitty and WezTerm. A staging area lets users run commands across several files. For space analysis, sorting by size or date and whale-spotting mode help locate large items; sizes, dates, and file counts are calculated in the background. Git views show file states, branch, upstream divergence, and change statistics. Client-server mode uses Unix sockets and is available only on Unix-like systems. Broot is free under the MIT License, with source and precompiled binaries available.
cfiles
cfiles is a free terminal file manager written in C with ncurses and vim-like keybindings. It targets a ranger-like interface while remaining lightweight, fast and minimal, and runs on Linux and macOS. Navigation uses h, j, k and l, with shortcuts for top, middle, bottom and page scrolling. The f and F keys search with fzf, while S opens a shell in the current directory. File selections can be copied, moved, renamed, sent to trash or removed. Preview support covers images, media information, archives and PDFs through external dependencies. Users can save bookmarks and run executable scripts from the configured cfiles directory. Dependencies include ncursesw, cp and mv, fzf, w3mimgdisplay or Überzug, mediainfo, atool and pdftoppm. Überzug cannot preview MP3 album art and has nonfunctional arrow-key scrolling; w3mimgdisplay previews may disappear after terminal resizing or workspace changes. Trash deletion requires a specific directory, and configuration falls back to $HOME/.config when XDG_CONFIG_HOME is unset.