A complete CLI file manager: Yazi

Like everyone else, I’ve started navigating and managing my files with GUI apps, but soon realized that a CLI tool would better integrate into my workflow. Then I encountered some limitations and used the power of Zsh to complete this task directly from the commandline.

I kept an eye open for any CLI alternatives though, because in a few circumstances large file manipulations were still tricky. I’ve tried different approaches, but one thing that definitely brought me back to the straight commandline is the fuzzy find search ( Fzf ), until I came across Yazi .

After few months of daily use, I think I can recommend it.

Features that sold me on yazi

From the project page, here are the features I was first attracted with:

• all I/O operations are asynchronous
• provides real-time progress updates, task cancellation, and internal task priority assignment
• integration with ripgrep, fd, fzf
• multi-tab support, cross-directory selection, scrollable preview (for videos, PDFs, archives, code, directories, etc.)
• bulk renaming

Here are some additional features you may also like:

• built-in support for multiple image protocols, and also integrated with Überzug++ and Chafa
• built-in code highlighting and image decoding
• integration with zoxide
• UI plugins to rewrite most of the UI, functional plugins, custom previewer/preloader/spotter/fetcher
• which-key feature

But Yazi is way more than this short list of features. Walking you through it will take hours. You can take a look at the great documentation on the project page, and also watch this two great overviews:

(source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUwu3mkrz_k )

Searching is vital

As I mentioned, a good search support is important to me. Here again, Yazi couldn’t have done it better. It offers:

• file searching (using fd)
• file content searching (using rg)
• file subtree navigation (using Fzf)

This will cover any search needs one may have. I use Fzf all over the place, so having a file manager that supports it is really what made me fall in love with Yazi.

Additionally, you can also:

• filter the files by pattern
• sort the files alphabetically/by extension/by creation/by modification date (normal or reverse)

A good tool is a customizable tool

Yazi is fully customizable through three config files:

• yazi.toml to mess up the UI
• theme.toml to adjust all colors individually
• keymap.toml to remap all keybindings to your liking

Most keybindings are pretty obvious, but I’d like to share here the ones I’ve created to use Trash-cli (note that I’m using tmux also):

{ on = "d",     run = "shell --confirm 'trash-put $@'",                                   desc = "Trash selected files" },  
{ on = "R",     run = "shell --confirm 'tmux popup -E \"trash-restore\"'",                desc = "Restore trashed files" },  
{ on = "T",     run = "shell --confirm 'tmux popup -E \"trash-list && trash-empty\"'",    desc = "Empty trash" }  

I’ve also tweaked the paste command to deselect files when the action is completed:

{ on = "p",     run = ["paste", "unyank"],    desc = "Paste yanked files" }  

Conclusion

I was yet not able to find the limits of Yazi for my needs. I still have the reflex to perform simple actions directly from the commandline because of muscle memory and also because it’s faster, but as soon as I need to work on multiple files or across several directories I love using Yazi.