nnn vs UnixTree
nnn
github.comUnixTree
github.comSide by side
| Figure | nnn | UnixTree |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · File managers | 8.7 (#4) | 7.6 (#22) |
| Spec score · Terminal File Managers | 8.5 (#7) | 7.5 (#26) |
| Dual-pane layout | No | No |
| File operations | It can analyze disk usage, batch rename, launch apps, pick files, and copy, move, delete, archive, and link selections. | It supports daily file and directory maintenance and operations on selected files across the directory tree. |
| License | The GitHub repository identifies the project license as BSD-2-Clause. | The project is released as free and open source software under the GNU General Public License. |
| Linux support | Yes | Yes |
| macOS support | Yes | Yes |
| Purpose | nnn is a full-featured terminal file manager. | UnixTree is a console-mode file manager for Unix and Linux modeled after DOS XTreeGold. |
| Support | The project invites users to discuss new ideas or enhancement requests in GitHub Discussions. | The maker site provides an email contact for comments on UnixTree. |
| Windows support | No | Yes |
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.