elio vs FileManagerTUI

elio is a free, open-source terminal file manager for Linux, macOS, Windows, and self-hosted use. Its Places, Files, and Preview panes offer grid and list views, with keyboard and mouse navigation. It previews text, code, documents, archives, media, and other file types; supported terminals can display images inline. File operations include creating and extracting common archives, finding duplicates, and trashing, restoring, or permanently deleting items. Remote file access is supported. Shell wrappers for bash, zsh, fish, and Nushell can return the shell to the browsed directory when elio closes, and an optional zoxide integration opens a picker using recorded directory history. It works without extra preview tools; optional Poppler, FFmpeg, resvg, and 7-Zip tools add preview and archive capabilities. Installation methods are listed for several Linux distributions, macOS through Homebrew, FreeBSD, and Cargo. elio can be configured as a file chooser on Linux and FreeBSD.

FileManagerTUI is a free terminal file manager built with Rust and Ratatui, available for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Its dual-pane interface combines a file tree with a live preview and syntax highlighting. Users can navigate with Vim-style keys or arrow keys, search project files with a Ctrl+P fuzzy finder, and filter directories inline. File operations include creating, renaming, deleting, copying, cutting, pasting, and undoing. The inline editor supports syntax highlighting, undo and redo, find and replace, auto-indent, text selection, and mouse cursor positioning. An integrated PTY shell panel uses VT100 emulation, and notebook previews render Jupyter cells with syntax highlighting. Files over a configurable threshold use a head/tail preview mode. The software can browse S3 buckets through the AWS CLI, but that mode is read-only and requires valid AWS credentials. Building from source requires a Rust toolchain. It is distributed under the MIT License, which permits use, modification, distribution, sublicensing, and resale; the software is provided without warranty or liability.