Dolphin vs nnn
Dolphin
apps.kde.orgnnn
github.comSide by side
| Figure | Dolphin | nnn |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · File Manager Software | 8.8 (#3) | 8.7 (#6) |
| Archive support | Yes | Yes |
| Dual-pane view | Yes | No |
| File operations | It supports creating, moving, deleting, compressing, sharing, and duplicating files and folders. | It can analyze disk usage, batch rename, launch apps, pick files, and copy, move, delete, archive, and link selections. |
| Integrations | The product page names Git and Nextcloud plugins, and lists extensions for Google Drive, Amazon S3, Samba sharing, and local network services. | Remote mounts can use sshfs or rclone, and nnn supports desktop openers, shell integration, and FreeDesktop-compliant trash utilities. |
| License | The Dolphin page lists the license as GPL-2.0-or-later. | The GitHub repository identifies the project license as BSD-2-Clause. |
| Navigation | Multiple tabs and split view let users navigate multiple folders and drag files between views. | It supports contexts, sessions, bookmarks, directory marks, and remote mounts through sshfs or rclone. |
| Supported platforms | linux,windows | The project says nnn runs on Linux, macOS, Android through Termux, Cygwin, and WSL, among other environments. |
| Purpose | Dolphin is KDE’s file manager for browsing and managing files on hard drives, USB sticks, SD cards, and other storage. | nnn is a full-featured terminal file manager. |
| Support | The product page links to the Dolphin Handbook and KDE forum for help, and to bug reporting and source code pages. | The project invites users to discuss new ideas or enhancement requests in GitHub Discussions. |
Plans
In their own words
Dolphin
Dolphin is KDE’s file manager for browsing and managing files on local storage, including hard drives, USB sticks and SD cards, as well as remote machines and internet cloud services. It supports creating, moving, deleting, compressing, sharing and duplicating files and folders. Multiple tabs let users work in several folders, while split view supports drag-and-drop copying or moving between panes. Choose among grid, detailed and tree views, and configure most of the application’s behavior. The right-click menu supports custom actions. An integrated terminal runs commands in the current folder. Plugins extend workflows with Git and Nextcloud, while listed extensions cover services such as Google Drive, Amazon S3 and Samba. Dolphin is free and open source under GPL-2.0-or-later. Linux installation is available through AppStream stores or distribution package managers, and Flathub is listed. Windows installers are available as nightly builds for testing. KDE links to a handbook, forum, bug reporting and source code for support and contribution.
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.