emelFM2 vs nnn
emelFM2
emelfm2.netnnn
github.comSide by side
| Figure | emelFM2 | nnn |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 1 |
| Spec score · File Manager Software | 7.0 (#96) | 8.7 (#6) |
| Archive support | The unpack plugin supports .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .tar, .zip, .7z, .rar, .arj, and .zoo archives. | Yes |
| Configuration | The user guide says most of the interface can be changed and configuration is saved between sessions. | nnn has no configuration file and uses sensible defaults with optional environment-variable configuration. |
| Dependencies | The listed requirements include Gtk+ 2.6 or later and the shell commands grep and sed; compiling also requires libmagic development files and GCC 3.2 or later. | Optional integrations include sshfs and rclone for remote mounts, gio trash or trash-cli for trash, and advcpmv for copy and move progress. |
| Dual-pane view | Yes | No |
| Supported platforms | Linux and other UNIX-like systems | The project says nnn runs on Linux, macOS, Android through Termux, Cygwin, and WSL, among other environments. |
| Plugins | The user guide describes optional plugins, including tools for access-control lists, finding files, comparing directories, and packing or unpacking archives. | Language-agnostic plugins can add capabilities such as live previews, disk mounting, file comparison, and uploads. |
| Purpose | emelFM2 is a file manager for UNIX-like operating systems. | nnn is a full-featured terminal file manager. |
| Support | The project directs users to report bugs through its ticket system and also provides a mailing list. | The project invites users to discuss new ideas or enhancement requests in GitHub Discussions. |
Plans
In their own words
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.