elio

Snappy, batteries-included terminal file manager with rich previews, inline images, bulk actions, and trash support.

Documentation

• Installation: https://elio-fm.github.io/install/
• Docs: https://elio-fm.github.io/docs/

Features

• Three-pane layout — Places, Files, and Preview side by side
• Rich previews — text, code, documents, archives, media, and more; see Preview Coverage
• Inline images — rendered directly in supported terminals
• Customizable Places and devices — pinned folders plus auto-detected drives and mounts
• Quick actions — Go-to, Open With, and copy-to-clipboard
• Trash management — trash, restore, or permanently delete files
• Keyboard and mouse navigation — browse comfortably either way
• Grid and list views — switch with v, zoom the grid with Ctrl++ / Ctrl+-
• Fuzzy search — find folders and files quickly
• Zoxide jumps — jump to frequent directories from your zoxide history
• Shell integration — install cd-on-exit wrappers for bash, zsh, fish, and Nushell
• Theming — full palette and file-class control via theme.toml

Installation

Arch Linux

Install from the AUR with your preferred AUR helper:

paru -S elio

Fedora

Enable the COPR repository and install with dnf:

sudo dnf copr enable miguelregueiro/elio
sudo dnf install elio

Debian and Ubuntu-based Linux

Configure the official apt repository and install with apt:

curl -fsSL https://elio-fm.github.io/elio-apt/install.sh | sudo sh
sudo apt install elio

Manual repository setup is available in elio-apt. To install without adding a repository, download elio_amd64.deb from the latest release.

The apt repository currently publishes amd64 packages.

Homebrew

Install from Homebrew:

brew install elio

Cargo

Install from crates.io:

cargo install elio

elio starts in your current working directory by default. Pass a file or directory path to open it instead.

cargo run --release

Example Themes

A few bundled themes are shown below. More are available in examples/themes/. See Theming for theme paths and docs.

Image Previews

Inline visual previews, including images, covers, thumbnails, and rendered pages, work automatically on supported terminals.

Sixel terminals can render large or first-time previews more slowly than Kitty Graphics or iTerm2 Inline backends.

In Konsole, inline previews are temporarily cleared while modal popups are open to avoid rendering artifacts.

Useful environment variables:

Preview Coverage

elio previews many file types directly in the Preview pane:

• Text, source code, Markdown, logs, and structured data such as JSON, YAML, TOML, CSV/TSV, and SQLite
• Documents such as PDFs, ebooks, Office files, OpenDocument files, and Apple Pages
• Images, audio, and video metadata, with inline images, covers, and thumbnails when supported
• Folders, archives, comic archives, torrents, ISO images, and other disk-image-style containers
• Binary files with useful metadata when no richer preview is available

Some richer previews require optional system tools such as Poppler, FFmpeg, resvg, 7-Zip, unar, or FontForge.

See the preview docs: https://elio-fm.github.io/docs/previews/

Optional Preview Tools

elio works out of the box, but a few external tools enable richer previews for specific file types:

• poppler for PDF previews
• ffmpeg / ffprobe for media metadata and thumbnails
• resvg for SVG previews
• 7z / unar for archive previews
• fontforge for font previews

See the full optional tools list and package names in the docs: https://elio-fm.github.io/docs/optional-tools/

Using elio over SSH

elio works well over SSH for navigation, file operations, text/code previews, and terminal-based workflows.

Rich visual previews depend on the remote host and the local terminal:

• Text and code previews work normally.
• Images, PDF pages, video thumbnails, album art, SVG previews, and archive extras need terminal image support plus optional preview tools installed on the remote host.
• Terminal apps opened through Open With run inside the SSH session.
• System openers such as Enter, o, open, gio, xdg-open, or cmd /c start use the remote host's opener stack. From an SSH session, they may open on the remote host, fail, or do nothing useful.

Workflow

elio supports common file-manager actions directly from the keyboard:

• Enter opens folders or selected files with the system default application.
• O opens files through the Open With flow when supported, including terminal apps.
• c copies names, paths, or directory paths using OSC52 or the platform clipboard.
• g opens quick jumps for common locations such as Home, Downloads, config, and Trash.
• d moves files to Trash; D deletes permanently; in the Trash view, d also deletes permanently and r restores.
• f searches folders, while Ctrl+F searches files in the current tree.
• z jumps through zoxide history when zoxide is installed.
• ! opens a shell in the current folder and returns to elio when the shell exits.

Platform details vary for clipboard tools, trash backends, file openers, and shell selection. See the workflow docs: https://elio-fm.github.io/docs/workflow/

Change Directory on Quit

elio can leave your shell in the directory you were browsing when you quit:

elio shell install

Restart your shell, then run elio normally. Press q to quit and move your shell to elio's final directory, or Q to quit without changing directories.

See the shell integration docs for uninstall steps, supported shells, and manual setup: https://elio-fm.github.io/docs/shell-integration/

Configuration

elio reads configuration from:

See examples/config.toml for an annotated example, or the configuration docs: https://elio-fm.github.io/docs/configuration/

Theming

elio themes are TOML files layered on top of the built-in defaults, so you only need to set the keys you want to change.

See assets/themes/default/theme.toml for the full default theme and examples/themes/ for ready-made themes.

For transparent or terminal-palette setups, see examples/themes/transparent/theme.toml and examples/themes/terminal-ansi/theme.toml.

Theme docs: https://elio-fm.github.io/docs/themes/

License

MIT