cfiles vs Runa

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.

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.