veld

A modern, tileable, terminal-based file manager built with Python and Textual.

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About

veld is a powerful, modern file manager that runs directly in your terminal. Inspired by classic TUIs like Ranger and Midnight Commander, veld offers a fresh take with an emphasis on simplicity, ease of use, and multi-panel navigation.

✨ Features

• 🗂️ Tileable Panels: Open multiple directory views side-by-side to streamline your workflow.
• 📂 Toggle-able File Previews: Automatically see a preview of the highlighted file—text, code, and even images. Press a key to hide it when you need more space.
• 🔍 Recursive File Search: Instantly find files and directories within the current panel.
• ⌨️ Intuitive Navigation: Navigate your filesystem and switch between panels with familiar, ergonomic keybindings.
• ⚙️ Powerful File Operations: Perform common operations like copy, move, delete, and rename in the active panel.
• ዚ Archive Management: Create and extract zip/tar archives directly within the file manager.
• 🎨 Customizable Keybindings: Don't like the defaults? Change every keybinding by editing a simple configuration file.
• 🐧 Cross-Platform: Built with Python and Textual, veld runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
• Vim Mode: Queue up file operations and execute them in a batch, Vim-style.

🚀 Installation

You need Python 3.9+ and pip installed.

Install the latest development version directly from GitHub:

pip install git+https://github.com/BranBushes/veld-fm.git

Or using uv:

uv pip install git+https://github.com/BranBushes/veld-fm.git

This will install veld and make the veld command available in your terminal.

💻 Usage

Once installed, you can run veld from anywhere in your terminal. You can also provide an optional starting directory for the first panel.

# Start in the default home directory
veld

# Start in the ~/Documents directory
veld ~/Documents

Navigating Panels

Use Tab and Shift+Tab to cycle focus between open panels. The active panel is highlighted with a colored border.

Vim Mode

Veld includes an optional Vim-style command mode for batching file operations.

• Enter Command Mode: Press : to open the command input.
• :vim - Toggles Vim Mode on or off.
• :w - Executes (writes) all queued actions.
• :c - Clears all queued actions.

When Vim Mode is active, a list of queued actions will appear in the bottom-right corner.

⌨️ Keybindings

Keybindings are organized by function and can be fully customized (see Configuration section).

Application & Panel Management

Key	Action
q	Quit the application
o	Open a new panel (prompts for path)
O (Shift+o)	Open panel at selected directory
w	Close the active panel
p	Toggle the preview panel
backspace	Close the search panel
:	Enter Command Mode

File & Directory Operations

Key	Action
enter	Open file or directory (default app)
e	Open file with... (prompts for command)
space	Toggle file selection
f	Find files/directories
n	Rename a file
d	Create a directory
r	Delete selected files (queues in Vim Mode)
m	Move selected files
c	Copy selected files (queues in Vim Mode)
a	Archive selected items
x	Extract highlighted archive

🔧 Configuration

On the first run, a config file is created at ~/.config/veld-fm/config.toml. You can edit this file to change keybindings.

🧑‍💻 For Developers

To set up a development environment:

git clone https://github.com/BranBushes/veld-fm.git
cd veld-fm
./setup.sh # This creates a venv and installs in editable mode
source .venv/bin/activate

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Made with ❤️ from Bangladesh!