nnn vs ranger
nnn
github.com
ranger
ranger.fmSide by side
| Figure | nnn | ranger |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · File Manager Software | 8.7 (#6) | 7.0 (#95) |
| Spec score · File managers | 8.7 (#4) | 6.9 (#29) |
| Spec score · Terminal File Managers | 8.5 (#7) | 7.0 (#28) |
| 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. | Ranger supports common file operations, including creating, copying, deleting, and changing permissions, as well as renaming multiple files at once. |
| Installation | The project offers a statically linked binary and packages, and can also be compiled from source. | The README describes installation through an operating system package manager, PyPI, pipx, or a source clone. |
| License | The GitHub repository identifies the project license as BSD-2-Clause. | The project repository identifies Ranger’s license as GNU General Public License Version 3. |
| Navigation | It supports contexts, sessions, bookmarks, directory marks, and remote mounts through sshfs or rclone. | Features include multi-column display, tabs, bookmarks, mouse support, and changing the shell’s directory after Ranger exits. |
| Product | nnn is a full-featured terminal file manager designed to be small, fast, and nearly zero-configuration. | Ranger is a console file manager with VI key bindings and a curses interface for browsing directory hierarchies. |
| Requirements | nnn depends on a wide-character curses library and libc; libreadline is optional, and some features need external utilities. | The documentation lists Python and a pager such as less as its main requirements. |
| Support | The project invites users to discuss new ideas or enhancement requests in GitHub Discussions. | The project lists an IRC channel, mailing list, GitHub issue tracker, and direct email as communication or support channels. |
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.