nnn vs xplr
nnn
github.comxplr
xplr.devSide by side
| Figure | nnn | xplr |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · File Manager Software | 8.7 (#6) | 7.1 (#92) |
| Spec score · File managers | 8.7 (#4) | 7.2 (#26) |
| Spec score · Terminal File Managers | 8.5 (#7) | 7.0 (#29) |
| 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. | xplr describes itself as an explorer that delegates file management operations to external commands. |
| Integrations | Remote mounts can use sshfs or rclone, and nnn supports desktop openers, shell integration, and FreeDesktop-compliant trash utilities. | The integrations list includes editor integrations for Neovim and Vim, GitHub CLI repository browsing, and a Powerlevel10k shell prompt. |
| License | The GitHub repository identifies the project license as BSD-2-Clause. | The project repository identifies xplr as MIT licensed. |
| 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. | Plugins can be installed manually or with a plugin manager, and some may require LuaRocks. |
| Preview pane | Yes | Yes |
| Product | nnn is a full-featured terminal file manager designed to be small, fast, and nearly zero-configuration. | xplr is a terminal UI based file explorer intended to help improve terminal productivity. |
| Support | The project invites users to discuss new ideas or enhancement requests in GitHub Discussions. | The introduction invites users to report performance issues, and the integrations page invites users to share integrations they create. |
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.