Tiles — TUI File Manager !!!

A dual-pane TUI file manager built in Rust. Vim-style navigation, built-in text editor with syntax highlighting, git integration, SSH remote browsing, system monitoring, and smart terminal tab spawning — all in one terminal interface.

Features

• Dual-Pane File Manager — Navigate two directories side-by-side with drag & drop, batch operations, hidden file toggle, column sorting
• Marquee Selection — Drag-select multiple files at once; Ctrl+drag toggles selection; Escape cancels. Drag from Name column for marquee, from other columns for file drag.
• Cross-Pane Drag & Drop — Drag files between panes, including drop on empty space to move/copy to the target directory
• Undo Close Tab — Ctrl+Shift+T reopens recently closed tabs (up to 10)
• Built-in Text Editor — Syntax highlighting via syntect, unlimited undo/redo, multi-selection, live search, right-click context menu, line movement (Alt+Up/Down), duplicate (Ctrl+D), kill line (Ctrl+K/U)
• Smart Terminal Spawning — Commands open in a new tab in your current terminal window (Konsole via D-Bus, Kitty, Wezterm) instead of a new window
• Run Files — Ctrl+R runs scripts (shebang), Cargo projects, and extension-mapped executables
• Git Integration — Commit history viewer, staged/unstaged diffs, branch info, ahead/behind tracking
• Remote SSH — Browse remote filesystems via SSH, SFTP-style file operations, auto-import from ~/.ssh/config
• System Monitor — CPU/memory/disk/network stats with sparklines, process list with kill support
• Sidebar — Folder tree, Favorites, Recent folders, Storage devices, SSH remotes. Toggle sections in Settings.
• 14 Theme Presets — Legacy Red (default), Cyberpunk, Ocean Deep, Solarized, Gruvbox, Dracula, Tokyo Night, Nord, Catppuccin, Rose Pine, One Dark, Monokai, Paper, and Terminal. All WCAG-compliant.
• Path Input — Click the breadcrumb bar to edit the path directly
• Keyboard-first — Vim-style navigation, command palette (:), context menus

Key Bindings Philosophy

Key	Files View	Editor View
Space	Open file in editor (text) or do nothing (binary/image)	—
Enter	Enter directory / open file with xdg-open	—
Ctrl+R	—	Run current file
F2	Rename	Find & Replace
Ctrl+D	System monitor	Duplicate current line
Ctrl+E	—	Switch to editor

Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcuts are context-sensitive. The same key does different things depending on which view is active.

Navigation

Key	Action
h/j/k/l or arrows	Navigate
Enter	Open file with xdg-open / enter directory
Space	Open text file in editor (binary/image files: no-op)
Backspace	Go to parent directory
Tab	Switch panes / focus sidebar
Ctrl+H	Toggle hidden files
Ctrl+Shift+T	Undo close tab
:	Command palette

Sidebar

Key	Action
Tab	Focus sidebar / return to file pane
Up/Down	Navigate sidebar items
Enter	Navigate to folder (expand if collapsed)
Space	Toggle expand/collapse folder
Shift+C	Collapse all folders
Esc	Exit sidebar focus

Editor

Key	Action
Ctrl+E	Editor view
Ctrl+R	Run current file
F2	Find & Replace
Alt+Up / Alt+Down	Move current line up/down
Ctrl+D	Duplicate current line
Ctrl+K	Kill to end of line
Ctrl+U	Kill to start of line
Ctrl+A	Select all
Ctrl+Home	Jump to document start
Ctrl+End	Jump to document end
Right-click	Open context menu

Other Views

Key	Action
Ctrl+G	Git history view
Ctrl+L	Edit current path
q	Quit

Install

From crates.io (recommended)

cargo install tiles-tui-file-manager

The binary is installed as tiles:

tiles

From source

git clone https://github.com/DraconDev/tiles-tui-file-manager
cd tiles-tui-file-manager
cargo build --release
./target/release/tiles

Or use the build script (auto-detects install path):

./scripts/build.sh

Pre-compiled Binaries

Download from GitHub Releases.

Terminal Compatibility

Tiles detects your terminal and spawns commands as new tabs in the current window when possible:

Terminal	Tab Spawning Method
Konsole	D-Bus org.kde.KDBusService.CommandLine (falls back to --new-tab CLI flag)
Kitty	kitty @ launch --type=tab
Wezterm	wezterm cli spawn --new-window=false
Others	Per-terminal CLI flags (--new-tab, --tab, etc.)

Konsole note: qdbus crashes on some NixOS/Konsole versions (SIGSEGV exit 139). Tiles uses dbus-send instead, which works reliably. The blocked runCommand D-Bus API is bypassed via KDBusService.CommandLine.

Optional Dependencies

For drag & drop support (dragging files from Tiles to other apps):

• dragon
• ripdrag

Tiles auto-detects these tools and adds a "Drag" option to the context menu.

Configuration

Settings are stored in ~/.config/tiles/settings.toml. Toggle sidebar sections, theme, and other preferences from within the app via the Settings modal.

License

This project is dual-licensed:

• AGPL-3.0-only — See LICENSE for the full text. This is the default license for open source use.
• Commercial License — For organizations that prefer not to comply with AGPLv3's source disclosure requirements. See COMMERCIAL-LICENSE.md for details.

By contributing to this project, you agree to the terms in CLA.md.