A dual-panel file manager for the terminal, inspired by Far Manager and Norton Commander. Built in Rust with ratatui.
Designed to handle very large files — the hex editor and text editor both use sliding buffers and lazy scanning, so opening a 10 GB log file is instant.
File Manager
- Dual-panel layout with directory listings (name, size, date, permissions)
- File operations: copy (F5), move (F6), rename (Shift+F6), mkdir (F7), delete (F8), archive (Shift+F5)
- Directory size calculation (F3) — async recursive scan with live progress, works on selections
- Multi-file selection with Shift+Up/Down (toggle) and Insert key for batch operations
- Far Manager-style dialogs with keyboard navigation (copy, mkdir, delete, rename)
- Quick search — just start typing to jump to a file, Enter to open
- Go-to-path (Ctrl+G) — type a path to navigate instantly, with zsh-style tab completion (case-insensitive, overlay dropdown)
- Fuzzy file search (Ctrl+F) — recursively finds files by partial/misspelled names, ranked by match quality, opens in editor
- Search in files (Ctrl+S) — ripgrep-powered content search with file filter, regex support, tree view results, Enter opens editor at match line with search term highlighted
- Clipboard copy — Ctrl+C copies filename, Ctrl+P copies full path (OSC 52)
- All dialog inputs support text selection (Shift+arrows), Ctrl+A select all, Ctrl+C copy, Ctrl+X cut, Ctrl+Z undo, Ctrl+Shift+Z redo
- Sort by name, size, or date (F9), persisted across restarts
- Mouse support — click to select, double-click to open, scroll wheel to navigate
- Filesystem watcher — panels auto-refresh on external changes (kqueue/inotify, zero-cost idle)
- Persistent state — panel paths, sort preferences, search queries, open panels, and split sizes survive restarts
Git Integration
- Git status markers per file:
●modified,+added,-deleted,→renamed,?untracked,!conflict - Branch name with
⎇glyph in panel title - Ahead/behind remote counts (
↑N ↓M) - Repo-wide status summary in panel title (
● 6 + 3 ? 7) - GitHub PR status with CI check indicators (
PR #42 ✓/✗/○), merged (●magenta) and closed (✘red) states - Shared git cache across panels, fully async git status + PR queries (instant startup, never blocks UI)
- Uses
--no-optional-locksto avoid index.lock conflicts with other tools - File name coloring based on git status
Connectivity (Ctrl+T) [experimental]
- Browse remote filesystems in the dual-panel file manager
- 8 protocols: SSH, SFTP, SMB, WebDAV, S3/S3-compatible, GCS, Azure Blob Storage, NFS
- Unified connection dialog with protocol tabs (Alt+Left/Right to cycle)
- Cross-panel copy/move between local and any remote (F5/F6)
- Remote file editing: F3/F4 downloads to temp, edits locally, uploads on save
- Create files (Shift+F7) and directories (F7) on remote
- Delete (F8), rename (Shift+F6) on remote
- Saved connections: F2 in dialog saves for quick reconnect
- Background connections with progress display and 30-second timeout
- Auto-disconnect: Ctrl+T on a remote panel returns to local
- All protocols shell out to system CLI tools (
ssh,sftp,smbclient,curl,aws,gcloud,az,mount) - S3-compatible: MinIO, Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, DigitalOcean Spaces via
--endpoint-url - Azure: connection string support, container browsing, Azurite-compatible
- Debug logging: set
MM_DEBUG=1for shell command tracing
Session Persistence (--session)
middle-manager --session <name>creates/attaches to persistent tmux sessions- Survive terminal disconnects; reattach from any device via SSH
- Session manager dialog (Ctrl+Y): create, attach, kill sessions
- Detach with backtick then d (tmux prefix set to
`to avoid conflicts) - Nested session detection prevents tmux-in-tmux issues
Settings (Shift+F1)
- Theme switcher: Far Manager (Classic) and QuestDB Dark
- QuestDB Dark: deep purple-black backgrounds with rose-pink accents
- Theme persisted across restarts
CI Panel (F2)
- Tree view of CI checks with expand/collapse
- GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps support
- Expand a check to see its steps with status markers (✓ ✗ ○ –)
- Download step logs and open in the built-in editor
- Async fetching with animated spinners — never blocks the UI
- Per-panel CI (left and right panels can each have their own CI view)
- Tab/Shift+Tab cycles focus forward/backward through all panels
- PageUp/PageDown/Home/End for fast scrolling through long check lists
- Alt+Up/Down to resize split, Alt+Enter to maximize/restore
- Mouse click support for selecting items in the tree
- Failed checks sorted to top for quick access
- PR number displayed in panel title
- Ctrl+E: Extract all failures — downloads failed test logs, parses failure patterns (Rust, Java, Go, Python, Jest), writes consolidated Markdown report
- Azure DevOps test results API (instant, no log download) with PAT auth support
- GitHub API rate limit monitoring
Shell Panel (Ctrl+O)
- Spawns your default
$SHELLat the bottom of the active panel - Full PTY emulation — colors, cursor, scrollback all work
- Independent per-side (left and right panels can each have their own shell)
- Text selection: click-drag, double-click (word), triple-click (line)
- Ctrl+C copies selection to clipboard (sends SIGINT when no selection)
- Alt+Up/Down to resize split, Alt+Enter to maximize/restore
- F1 switches focus back to file panel, Ctrl+O closes
- Auto-closes when the shell exits
- Restored on restart
Archive (Shift+F5)
- Create tar.zst, tar.gz, tar.xz, or zip archives from selected files
- Smart auto-naming: common prefix detection, dominant extension, parent dir fallback
- Format picker: Space to cycle through formats
- Background compression with progress bar in status bar
- Symlink-safe traversal, collision resolution, UTF-8 safe naming
Parquet Viewer
- Auto-detected when opening
.parquetfiles (F4 / Enter) - Tree view: file metadata, key-value metadata (JSON pretty-printed), schema, row groups with column details
- Column statistics: null count, distinct count, min/max values formatted with logical types
- Tabular alignment for schema fields, column info, and metadata keys
- Table view (Tab): scrollable data grid with row group lazy loading
- Encoding names displayed as
Plain,RleDictionary,DeltaBinaryPacked, etc. - Handles pre-epoch timestamps correctly
Claude Code Panel (F12)
- Spawns
claudemaximized on the opposite panel, using the active panel's directory - Full PTY emulation via custom VT terminal emulator — colors, cursor, alternate screen all work
- All keystrokes (including Tab) forwarded to Claude Code
- 10,000-line scrollback buffer with trackpad/mouse scroll (like Ghostty/iTerm2)
- Text selection: click-drag, double-click (word), triple-click (line)
- Ctrl+C copies selection to clipboard (sends SIGINT when no selection)
- F5 opens file:line references from terminal output in the built-in editor
- F1 switches focus back to file panel, F12 closes
- Restored on restart with
claude -c(continues last session) - Auto-closes when Claude exits
- Coalescing wakeup mechanism — terminal output renders immediately without flooding the event loop
- Zero-allocation render loop with direct buffer writes
Hex Editor (F4 / Enter on binary files)
- Auto-detects binary files (null byte check in first 8 KB)
- VS Code-style layout: offset | hex bytes | ASCII decode
- 256 KB sliding buffer for arbitrarily large binaries
- Cursor navigation with arrow keys, Home/End, PgUp/PgDn
- Edit hex nibbles (0-9, A-F) or ASCII characters (Tab to switch sides)
- Modifications stored as in-place overlay — only changed bytes in memory
- Save writes only modified bytes (sorted sequential I/O)
- Undo/redo (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z) per-nibble
- Search hex patterns (F7) with forward/backward, wrap-around
- Go to offset (g) with hex address input
- Selection with Shift+arrows, Ctrl+A select all, Ctrl+C copy
- Data inspector: select 1/2/4/8 bytes to see decimal values in both endiannesses (u/i/float)
- Cursor tracking: hex and ASCII panes mirror cursor position
- Mouse click to position cursor in hex or ASCII pane
- Unsaved changes prompt on close
- Zero-allocation render loop with pre-computed lookup tables
Built-in Editor (F4 / Enter on text files)
- Line-level piece table — only edited lines live in memory
- Opens and navigates multi-GB files with no delay
- Tree-sitter syntax highlighting for Rust, Java, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, JSON, Go, C, Bash, TOML
- Hybrid highlighting: files under 10 MB get a cached full parse (always accurate); larger files use a context-window approach
- Search (F7) with forward/backward, case-sensitive toggle, wrap-around
- Undo/redo (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z): operation-based with minimal deltas, word-level grouping, 10K entry cap
- Streaming byte-level search — seeks directly to cursor position, no full-file scan
- Search results highlighted; Shift+F7 repeats last search
- Text selection with Shift+arrow keys
- Word navigation with Ctrl+Left/Right (Linux) or Option+Left/Right (Mac)
- Mouse click to position cursor, mouse scroll
- Ctrl+C to copy to system clipboard (OSC 52)
- Ctrl+A to select all
- Ctrl+K / Ctrl+Y to delete line
- Ctrl+Up/Down or Alt+PageUp/PageDown to jump to top/bottom of file
- F2 / Ctrl+S to save — uses byte-range copying for unmodified segments
- Ctrl+G for go-to-line
- Unsaved changes dialog on all exit paths (Esc, F10, Ctrl+Q)
- Dynamic line number width (scales with file size)
- Configurable cursor shape in theme
- Shift+F4 opens
$EDITORinstead
UI
- Multiple themes: Far Manager (Classic) and QuestDB Dark — switch with Shift+F1
- Centralized theme system — all colors in one file (
src/theme.rs), including syntax highlighting and git status colors - Thread-local cached theme access for zero-overhead rendering
- Consistent dialog styling with shared helpers (padding, separators, buttons, checkboxes)
- Contextual footer — shows relevant key hints for the active panel/mode
- Panel border titles with path (shortened with
~), git info, and CI status - Active/inactive panel focus with visual border and title color changes
- Dialog drop shadows
- Quit confirmation dialog (F10)
- Panic hook that restores the terminal before printing errors
- Cursor shape restored to terminal default on exit
brew install questdb/middle-manager/mm
curl -fsSL https://mm.questdb.io | sh
Or install from a package:
# Debian / Ubuntu — download .deb from the latest release
sudo dpkg -i middle-manager_*.deb
# Fedora / RHEL — download .rpm from the latest release
sudo rpm -i middle-manager-*.rpmPackages and tarballs for all platforms are available on the releases page.
git clone https://github.com/questdb/middle-manager.git
cd middle-manager
cargo build --release
./target/release/middle-manager
middle-manager # Normal launch
middle-manager --session <name> # Launch in a persistent tmux session
middle-manager --list-sessions # List active middle-manager sessions
MM_DEBUG=1 middle-manager # Enable debug logging to ~/.config/middle-manager/debug.log
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Up / Down | Navigate |
| Shift+Up / Shift+Down | Toggle selection and move |
| Insert | Toggle selection on current item |
| Left / Home | Jump to top |
| Right / End | Jump to bottom |
| Enter | Open directory / open file (editor / hex / parquet) |
| Backspace | Go to parent directory |
| Tab | Switch panel forward (cycles through CI/terminal panels) |
| Shift+Tab | Switch panel backward |
| Ctrl+F | Fuzzy file search (opens in editor) |
| Ctrl+G | Go to path (with tab completion) |
| Ctrl+S | Search in files (ripgrep-powered) |
| Ctrl+C | Copy filename to clipboard |
| Ctrl+O | Toggle shell panel |
| Ctrl+P | Copy full path to clipboard |
| F2 | Toggle CI panel |
| F3 | Calculate directory / selection size |
| F4 | Open file (editor / hex / parquet) |
| Shift+F4 | Edit file ($EDITOR) |
| F5 | Copy (operates on selection if active) |
| Shift+F5 | Create archive (tar.zst/gz/xz/zip) |
| F6 | Move (operates on selection if active) |
| Shift+F6 | Rename |
| F7 | Create directory |
| Shift+F7 | Create (touch) file |
| F8 | Delete (operates on selection if active) |
| F9 | Cycle sort |
| F10 | Quit (with confirmation) |
| F11 | Open PR in browser |
| Ctrl+T | Open Connectivity dialog (remote connections) |
| Ctrl+Y | Open session manager (tmux sessions) |
| F12 | Toggle Claude Code panel (maximized, opposite side) |
| Shift+F1 | Open settings (themes) |
| Type chars | Quick search |
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Up / Down | Navigate tree |
| PageUp / PageDown | Page through tree |
| Home / End | Jump to top / bottom |
| Right | Expand check (load steps) |
| Left | Collapse check / jump to parent |
| Enter | Expand/collapse check, or download step log |
| Ctrl+E | Extract all test failures to Markdown file |
| o | Open check in browser |
| Alt+Up / Alt+Down | Resize panel split |
| Alt+Enter | Maximize / restore panel |
| Tab / Shift+Tab | Switch panel forward / backward |
| F2 | Close CI panel |
| Mouse click | Select item and focus panel |
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| All keys (incl. Tab) | Forwarded to the shell |
| Mouse drag | Select text |
| Double-click / Triple-click | Select word / line |
| Ctrl+C | Copy selection (or SIGINT if none) |
| Scroll / Trackpad | Scroll through scrollback buffer |
| Alt+Up / Alt+Down | Resize panel split |
| Alt+Enter | Maximize / restore panel |
| F1 | Switch focus to file panel |
| Ctrl+O | Close shell panel |
| F10 | Quit (with confirmation) |
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| All keys (incl. Tab) | Forwarded to Claude Code |
| Mouse drag | Select text |
| Double-click / Triple-click | Select word / line |
| Ctrl+C | Copy selection (or SIGINT if none) |
| Scroll / Trackpad | Scroll through scrollback buffer |
| F5 | Open file:line reference in editor |
| F1 | Switch focus to file panel |
| F12 | Close Claude Code panel |
| F10 | Quit (with confirmation) |
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Up / Down | Navigate results |
| PageUp / PageDown | Page through results |
| Home / End | Jump to top / bottom |
| Enter | Open file in editor at match line |
| Right | Expand file matches |
| Left | Collapse file / jump to parent from match |
| Tab / Shift+Tab | Switch panel |
| Esc | Close search results |
| Scroll / Trackpad | Scroll results |
| Mouse click | Select result and focus panel |
| F10 | Quit (with confirmation) |
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Alt+Left / Alt+Right | Cycle protocol (SSH/SFTP/SMB/WebDAV/S3/GCS/Azure/NFS) |
| Tab | Cycle protocol (SSH/SFTP) or switch fields (others) |
| Enter | Connect |
| F2 | Save connection for quick access |
| Del | Remove saved connection |
| Esc | Close |
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| All keys (incl. Tab) | Forwarded to SSH session |
| Scroll / Trackpad | Scroll through scrollback buffer |
| Alt+Up / Alt+Down | Resize panel split |
| Alt+Enter | Maximize / restore panel |
| F1 | Switch focus to file panel |
| Ctrl+T | Close SSH panel / disconnect SFTP |
| F10 | Quit (with confirmation) |
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Up / Down | Navigate sessions |
| Enter | Attach to selected session |
| n | Create new session |
| d / Delete | Kill selected session |
| Esc | Close |
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Shift+Left/Right | Select text |
| Shift+Home/End | Select to start/end |
| Ctrl+A | Select all |
| Ctrl+C | Copy selection to clipboard |
| Ctrl+X | Cut selection |
| Ctrl+Z | Undo |
| Ctrl+Shift+Z | Redo |
| Delete | Delete forward |
| Mouse click | Focus input field |
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Arrow keys | Move cursor |
| Home / End | Start / end of row |
| Ctrl+Home / Ctrl+End | Start / end of file |
| PgUp / PgDn | Page through file |
| 0-9, A-F | Edit hex nibble |
| Tab | Switch hex / ASCII editing |
| Shift+arrows | Select bytes |
| Ctrl+A | Select all |
| Ctrl+C | Copy selection |
| g / Ctrl+G | Go to offset (hex) |
| F7 / Ctrl+F | Search hex pattern |
| n / N | Find next / previous |
| Ctrl+S / F2 | Save |
| Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z | Undo / Redo |
| Mouse click | Position cursor (hex or ASCII pane) |
| q / Esc | Close (prompts if unsaved) |
| F10 | Quit (with confirmation) |
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Up / Down | Navigate tree / scroll table |
| Right / Enter | Expand node |
| Left | Collapse node / jump to parent |
| PgUp / PgDn | Page through tree or table |
| Home / End | Jump to top / bottom |
| Tab | Toggle tree / table view |
| g | Go to row |
| q / Esc | Close |
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Arrow keys | Move cursor |
| Ctrl+Left / Right | Word skip (Linux) |
| Option+Left / Right | Word skip (Mac) |
| Home / End | Line start / end |
| Ctrl+Up / Ctrl+Down | File start / end |
| Alt+PageUp / Alt+PageDown | File start / end (Mac: Fn+Opt+Up/Down) |
| PgUp / PgDn | Page up / down |
| Shift+arrows | Select text |
| Ctrl+A | Select all |
| Ctrl+C | Copy selection to clipboard |
| Ctrl+Z | Undo |
| Ctrl+Shift+Z | Redo |
| Ctrl+K / Ctrl+Y | Delete line |
| Ctrl+G | Go to line:col |
| Ctrl+F / F7 | Search |
| Shift+F7 | Find next (repeat last search) |
| F2 / Ctrl+S | Save |
| Esc | Close editor (prompts if unsaved) |
| Mouse click | Position cursor |
| Mouse scroll | Scroll |
src/
main.rs Terminal setup, event loop, panic hook
app.rs App state machine, action dispatch, all modes
action.rs Action enum (every possible user intent)
event.rs Background thread event polling, coalescing wakeup mechanism
terminal.rs Embedded terminal: PTY lifecycle, key encoding (shell + Claude)
parquet_viewer.rs Parquet file viewer: metadata tree, column stats, table data decoding
file_search.rs File content search: ripgrep engine (ignore + grep-searcher), streaming results
text_input.rs Reusable text input: selection, undo/redo, cut/copy, horizontal scroll
ci.rs CI panel: check/step fetching, log download, failure extraction
remote_fs.rs RemoteFs trait: common interface for all remote protocols
sftp.rs SFTP connection (shells out to sftp CLI)
smb_client.rs SMB connection (shells out to smbclient)
webdav.rs WebDAV connection (shells out to curl + quick-xml)
s3.rs S3 connection (shells out to aws s3api)
gcs.rs GCS connection (shells out to gcloud storage)
azure_blob.rs Azure Blob connection (shells out to az CLI)
nfs_client.rs NFS connection (mount + local FS delegation)
ssh.rs SSH host config, ~/.ssh/config parsing
session.rs tmux session management
saved_connections.rs Saved connection store (JSON)
debug_log.rs Debug logging (MM_DEBUG=1)
state.rs Persistent state (JSON, ~/.config/middle-manager/)
syntax.rs Tree-sitter syntax highlighting with hybrid caching
theme.rs Centralized color scheme (panel, editor, git, syntax, dialog)
editor.rs Built-in editor with line-level piece table and streaming search
hex_viewer.rs Hex editor with sliding buffer, modifications overlay, undo/redo, search
watcher.rs Filesystem watcher (kqueue/inotify via notify crate)
panel/
mod.rs Panel state, directory reading, navigation, multi-file selection
entry.rs File entry metadata and formatting
sort.rs Sort by name/size/date
git.rs Git status cache, branch/ahead-behind, async PR queries
github.rs GitHub PR info via gh CLI
vt/
mod.rs Custom VT terminal emulator (replaces vt100 crate)
parser.rs ANSI/VT escape sequence parser (CSI, OSC, DEC private modes)
screen.rs Terminal screen state: cursor, scrollback, resize
grid.rs Cell grid with O(1) scroll via ring buffer
cell.rs Cell storage with attributes
attrs.rs SGR text attributes and color handling
color.rs Color types (16, 256, RGB)
fs_ops/
mod.rs Copy, move, delete, mkdir, rename (with nested path support)
archive.rs Archive creation (tar.zst, tar.gz, tar.xz, zip) with progress
ui/
mod.rs Top-level layout, mode routing, split CI panels
panel_view.rs Panel table rendering with git status column and tree title
ci_view.rs CI panel tree rendering with expand/collapse
header.rs Header margin
terminal_view.rs Terminal panel rendering (VT screen to ratatui spans)
file_search_dialog.rs Search-in-files dialog (path, term, filter, regex)
search_results_view.rs Search results tree view (files + matching lines)
footer.rs Contextual function key hints (normal / CI / terminal mode)
dialog.rs Simple dialogs (delete, rename) with cursor navigation
dialog_helpers.rs Shared dialog rendering (frame, buttons, checkboxes, separators)
mkdir_dialog.rs Far Manager-style mkdir dialog with "process multiple names"
copy_dialog.rs Far Manager-style copy/move dialog
search_dialog.rs Editor search dialog (query, direction, case sensitivity)
editor_view.rs Editor rendering with syntax highlighting and selection
hex_view.rs Hex editor rendering with zero-allocation lookup tables
parquet_view.rs Parquet viewer rendering (tree + table modes)
archive_dialog.rs Archive format picker dialog
shadow.rs Transparent dialog drop shadows
The editor uses a line-level piece table: the file stays on disk, split into segments. Unmodified segments reference the original file by byte offset. Edited lines are stored in memory. On save, unmodified segments are copied as byte ranges (fast), and only edited segments are written from memory. This makes editing a 10 GB file with a few changes practical.
The search engine streams raw file bytes in 4 MB chunks, using the sparse line index to seek directly to the cursor position. Forward search reads sequentially; backward search reads in reverse chunks. No per-line file I/O, no full-file scan.
The CI panel fetches data asynchronously — check lists, step details, and log downloads all run in background threads. The UI shows animated spinners and never blocks. GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps are both supported, with per-job log downloads (no full-run zip).
This project is in early development. Things we're considering:
- Undo/redo in editor
- Hex editor with search, undo/redo, data inspector
- File permissions dialog
- Configurable key bindings
- Multiple color schemes
- Archive browsing (tar, zip)
- Built-in terminal panel
- FTP/SFTP support
- Plugin system
We'd love to hear what you want. Open an issue to request features, report bugs, or share ideas.
Contributions are welcome! Please open an issue to discuss before sending large PRs.
Licensed under the Apache License 2.0.