Broot vs Runa
Broot
dystroy.orgRuna
github.comSide by side
| Figure | Broot | Runa |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Terminal File Managers | 8.6 (#2) | 7.9 (#19) |
| Spec score · File managers | 8.3 (#12) | 7.9 (#20) |
| Dual-pane layout | Yes | Yes |
| 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 project is dual licensed under MIT or Apache-2.0. |
| Linux support | Yes | Yes |
| macOS support | Yes | Yes |
| Preview pane | Yes | Yes |
| Purpose | Broot is a way to navigate directories, find files, and launch commands. | Runa is a fast, lightweight terminal file manager written in Rust. |
| Support | The maker provides contact by email and invites users to chat through Miaou. | The project directs users to GitHub issues for bug reports and Discussions for feature requests, and welcomes pull requests. |
| Windows support | 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.
Runa
Runa is a free terminal file manager written in Rust for Linux, macOS and Windows. Its keyboard-driven interface provides dual-pane browsing, a preview pane, tabs, and actions for moving, filtering, copying and renaming files. Keybindings, colors and layout can be changed in a TOML configuration file. The project describes a multithreaded engine with dedicated worker threads for input/output, previews, search and file operations. An optional fd installation enables recursive fuzzy search across files and folders; without fd, Runa remains usable but cannot perform that search. The optional bat tool adds syntax-highlighted previews, while built-in preview methods work without it. Installation is available through Cargo, Arch Linux AUR, Homebrew, Scoop, precompiled binaries or source builds. Releases from v0.5.11 are described as immutable and include attestations and SHA256 checksums. Runa is dual licensed under MIT or Apache-2.0 and remains under active development.