42B / ranger

A VIM-inspired filemanager for the console

ranger 1.9.2

ranger is a console file manager with VI key bindings. It provides a minimalistic and nice curses interface with a view on the directory hierarchy. It ships with rifle, a file launcher that is good at automatically finding out which program to use for what file type.

This file describes ranger and how to get it to run. For instructions on the usage, please read the man page. See HACKING.md for development specific information.

For configuration, check the files in ranger/config/ or copy the default config to ~/.config/ranger with ranger --copy-config.

The examples/ directory contains several scripts and plugins that demonstrate how ranger can be extended or combined with other programs. These files can be found in the git repository or in /usr/share/doc/ranger.

A note to packagers: Versions meant for packaging are listed in the changelog on the website.

About

• Authors: see AUTHORS file
• License: GNU General Public License Version 3
• Website: https://ranger.github.io/
• Download: https://ranger.github.io/ranger-stable.tar.gz
• Bug reports: https://github.com/ranger/ranger/issues
• git clone https://github.com/ranger/ranger.git

Design Goals

• An easily maintainable file manager in a high level language
• A quick way to switch directories and browse the file system
• Keep it small but useful, do one thing and do it well
• Console based, with smooth integration into the unix shell

Features

• UTF-8 Support (if your python copy supports it)
• Multi-column display
• Preview of the selected file/directory
• Common file operations (create/chmod/copy/delete/...)
• Renaming multiple files at once
• VIM-like console and hotkeys
• Automatically determine file types and run them with correct programs
• Change the directory of your shell after exiting ranger
• Tabs, bookmarks, mouse support

Dependencies

• Python (>=2.6 or >=3.1) with the curses module and (optionally) wide-unicode support.
• A pager (less by default)

Optional:

• The file program for determining file types
• The python module chardet, in case of encoding detection problems
• sudo to use the "run as root"-feature
• w3m for the w3mimgdisplay program to preview images
• python-bidi for correct display of RTL file names (Hebrew, Arabic)

Optional, for enhanced file previews (with scope.sh):

• img2txt (from caca-utils) for ASCII-art image previews
• highlight or pygmentize for syntax highlighting of code
• atool, bsdtar and/or unrar for previews of archives
• lynx, w3m or elinks for previews of html pages
• pdftotext or mutool for pdf previews
• transmission-show for viewing bit-torrent information
• mediainfo or exiftool for viewing information about media files
• odt2txt for OpenDocument text files (odt, ods, odp and sxw)
• chardet (Python package) for improved encoding detection of text files

Installing

Use the package manager of your operating system to install ranger. Note that ranger can be started without installing by simply running ranger.py.

To install ranger manually:

sudo make install

This translates roughly to:

sudo python setup.py install --optimize=1 --record=install_log.txt

This also saves a list of all installed files to install_log.txt, which you can use to uninstall ranger.

Getting Started

After starting ranger, you can use the Arrow Keys or h j k l to navigate, Enter to open a file or type Q to quit. The third column shows a preview of the current file. The second is the main column and the first shows the parent directory.

Ranger can automatically copy default configuration files to ~/.config/ranger if you run it with the switch --copy-config=( rc | scope | ... | all ). See ranger --help for a description of that switch. Also check ranger/config/ for the default configuration.