nnn vs pointer
nnn
github.compointer
github.comSide by side
| Figure | nnn | pointer |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · File managers | 8.7 (#4) | 8.5 (#8) |
| Spec score · Terminal File Managers | 8.5 (#7) | 8.3 (#11) |
| Archive support | Yes | Yes |
| Dependencies | Optional integrations include sshfs and rclone for remote mounts, gio trash or trash-cli for trash, and advcpmv for copy and move progress. | Rust and Cargo are required to build from source; optional runtime tools include bat, fzf, ImageMagick, pdftotext, git, xclip, locate, navi, and curl. |
| Dual-pane layout | No | Yes |
| File operations | It can analyze disk usage, batch rename, launch apps, pick files, and copy, move, delete, archive, and link selections. | It supports asynchronous copy and move operations and undo for delete, move, rename, copy, symlink, permissions, and bulk rename. |
| Integrations | Remote mounts can use sshfs or rclone, and nnn supports desktop openers, shell integration, and FreeDesktop-compliant trash utilities. | The README lists fzf, navi, locate, git, bat, ImageMagick, pdftotext, xclip, and curl as integrations or optional runtime dependencies. |
| License | The GitHub repository identifies the project license as BSD-2-Clause. | The project is released under the Unlicense, described on the page as public domain. |
| Linux support | Yes | Yes |
| macOS support | Yes | Yes |
| Plugins | Language-agnostic plugins can add capabilities such as live previews, disk mounting, file comparison, and uploads. | Its plugin system uses JSON manifests to bind external commands to keys. |
| Preview pane | Yes | Yes |
| Product | nnn is a full-featured terminal file manager designed to be small, fast, and nearly zero-configuration. | Pointer is a Rust terminal file manager and feature clone of RTFM. |
| Remote file access | Yes | Yes |
| Windows support | No | No |
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.
pointer
Pointer is a free, open-source terminal file manager for Linux and macOS. It presents files in a two-pane layout with configurable width ratios and border styles, plus previews with syntax highlighting for more than 20 languages and inline image display through kitty, sixel, or w3m protocols. Archives including zip, tar, gz, bz2, xz, rar, and 7z can be browsed and edited as virtual directories. File operations include asynchronous copying and moving, undo for several actions, and deletion with a flag-then-purge process and default confirmation. Pointer supports SSH/SFTP remote browsing, filename and content search, extension or regex filters, bookmarks, tabs, and file-picker mode. JSON-manifest plugins bind external commands to keys. The README describes OpenAI integration and Claude-powered descriptions and sessions. Linux and macOS binaries are listed for x86_64 and aarch64.