Far Manager vs nnn
Far Manager
farmanager.comnnn
github.comSide by side
| Figure | Far Manager | nnn |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · File Manager Software | 7.8 (#52) | 8.7 (#6) |
| Spec score · File managers | 7.5 (#23) | 8.7 (#4) |
| Spec score · Terminal File Managers | 7.6 (#24) | 8.5 (#7) |
| Archive support | Yes | Yes |
| Dual-pane layout | Yes | No |
| File operations | It supports viewing files and directories, editing, copying, and renaming files. | It can analyze disk usage, batch rename, launch apps, pick files, and copy, move, delete, archive, and link selections. |
| License | The source repository provides Far Manager under the BSD 3-Clause License, which permits redistribution and use in source and binary forms subject to its conditions. | The GitHub repository identifies the project license as BSD-2-Clause. |
| Supported platforms | Windows | The project says nnn runs on Linux, macOS, Android through Termux, Cygwin, and WSL, among other environments. |
| Plugins | External DLL plugins extend Far Manager through a plugins API. | Language-agnostic plugins can add capabilities such as live previews, disk mounting, file comparison, and uploads. |
| Purpose | Far Manager is a text-mode program for managing files and archives in Windows. | nnn is a full-featured terminal file manager. |
| Support | The project README lists English and Russian support forums and a bug tracker. | The project invites users to discuss new ideas or enhancement requests in GitHub Discussions. |
Plans
In their own words
Far Manager
Far Manager has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
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.