farman Manual

Basics

• farman is a dual-pane file manager. You move files between the two panes — one as the source, the other as the destination.
• Operations act on the active pane (the side with the cursor). Switch panes with Tab or by pressing the left/right key at a pane edge.
• Move the cursor with ↑ ↓, enter a directory with Enter, go to the parent with Backspace.
• Selection: Space (select and move down) / Shift+Space (select without moving). i inverts the selection, Ctrl+A selects all.
• Shift+letter jumps the cursor to the next file starting with that letter (press again for the next match).
• Three layouts: dual pane / single pane / preview. Ctrl+O toggles single pane; preview is available from the toolbar / settings.
• On macOS, Ctrl maps to ⌘ (Command).

View modes & panes

• Display layout: choose among dual pane (two panes) / single pane (one pane) / preview (Quick View). Toggle dual / single with Ctrl+O; switch to preview from the toolbar / settings. In preview, selecting a file on one side shows its content instantly on the other. (Settings and commands also call these “two panes / one pane”.)

  

  

  

• Thumbnails: list / small / medium / large (Cmd/Ctrl+1–4). Works for images and the first page of PDFs.

  

• Directory compare: color-coded per-row diff between the two panes; stays active after copying.

  

• Sync browse (y): moving one pane makes the other follow relatively.
• Directory sync (Ctrl+→ / Ctrl+←): match one pane's path to the other side.
• Sort & filter (s): per-pane ordering and display filter (can be saved for that directory only).

  

• Log pane (Ctrl+L): toggle the operation log.

Keybindings (defaults)

All of these can be changed under Settings → Keybindings (open Settings with Ctrl+,; Tab and Shift+letter are fixed). On macOS, Ctrl is ⌘.

Navigation & selection

File operations

Viewers, view & panes

Bookmarks, history & app

File operations

• Copy / move (c / m): sends the selection (or the cursor row if nothing is selected) to the other pane. The confirm dialog lets you set the destination and the overwrite behavior (ask each time / overwrite / skip / rename).

  

• Delete (d): choose trash or permanent deletion in the confirm dialog.

  

• Rename (r): rename the file under the cursor.

  

• Bulk rename (Ctrl+R): template + sequential numbering + regular-expression replacement, with a live preview before applying.

  

• Create: k for a directory, n for a file.

  

  

• Copy path (Ctrl+C): copies the absolute path of the cursor / selected files to the clipboard (newline-separated for multiple).
• Properties (a): a single dialog showing name, location, size, and modified / created dates together. The modified date and permissions (attributes) can be edited in place. A multi-selection shows the aggregated total size and item count; owner / group are shown with both name and ID (the name is editable only when it is common across the selected files, and is hidden on Windows).

  

• Open with the OS default app (Shift+Enter or double-click): opens the file / directory with its associated application.

Archives

• Create (p): pack selected files into zip / tar / tar.gz / tar.bz2 / tar.xz. You can set the compression level and AES-256 password encryption for zip.

  

• Extract (u): unpack the archive under the cursor. Encrypted zips can be extracted by entering the password.

  

• Browse inside archives: open an archive and move through it like a normal folder (the path shows as archive.zip!/inner/). You can also selectively extract — pick just the files / directories you need and extract only those.

  

Search & navigation

• File search (f): recursive search in the background; jump straight to a result.

  

• Quick Filter (/): quickly narrows the current directory by what you type.

  

• Bookmarks: b to add / remove the current location, Ctrl+B for the list. Besides your saved favorites, the list also shows auto-detected mounted drives (external disks and network drives).

  

• Directory history (h): jump to a previously visited directory.

  

• Address bar: type a path to navigate (with path completion).

  

Settings

Open Settings with Ctrl+,. Switch settings using the categories on the left (General / Behavior / Appearance / Plugins / External Apps / Keybindings). The main items in each category are:

• General: basic app-wide settings — startup behavior, window, language, and logging.

  

  • Initial directory: open Home / the last session / a custom path on startup. Set per pane (left / right).
  • Window: size and position as default / last session / custom.
  • Log: show the log pane (with a fixed height), and write logs to file (daily log files in a chosen folder, deleted automatically past the retention days, or kept forever).
  • Confirm on exit: whether to show a confirmation dialog when quitting.
  • Prevent multiple instances: don't launch a second copy of farman (takes effect on next launch).
  • Show toolbar: show or hide the toolbar.
  • Language: Auto (follows the OS) / English / Japanese. Applied on next launch.
  • Auto-update: check once per day, optionally download and install without asking, plus a “Check now” button.
  • Backup / restore: export / import all settings (including bookmarks, custom commands, and color schemes) as a single JSON file to move to another machine.
• Behavior: default behavior for sorting, navigation, file operations, and list display.

  

  • Default sort & filter: primary / secondary sort key and ascending / descending, where to place directories (first / last / mixed with files), sort dot files first, case sensitivity, show hidden files by default.
  • Navigation: cursor wrap-around, persist directory history (restored on next launch), match a dotfile's second character with Shift+key, notify when Sync Browse is auto-disabled.
  • File operations: move to Trash by default when deleting, auto-rename suffix, search exclude dirs, close the progress dialog automatically when done.
  • List display: file-size units (bytes / KB / KiB / auto) and thousands separator, date/time format, which columns to show.
  • Viewer display: default display mode for viewers (inline / separate window, etc.).
• Appearance: look-and-feel — theme, colors, cursor, row height, and so on.

  

  • Appearance now covers the app's own look (UI overall, file list, address bar, and so on). Each viewer's font, colors, image transparency, and associated extensions have moved to that viewer's settings under Settings → Plugins (see below).
  • Theme: overall UI color preset (Light / Dark; Auto follows the OS).
  • UI overall: the app's base colors.
  • Address bar: address-bar colors.
  • File list: per-category file colors (selected / unselected, active / inactive), bold, and row height. Font family / size and row height are shared between Light and Dark; colors and the directory bold setting are per theme.
  • Cursor / active pane: cursor appearance, highlight for the active side.
  • Directory compare: colors for diff rows.
• Plugins: lists the installed viewer plugins in per-type tabs. From each row's "Details..." you can review and change its category, plugin ID, path, enabled state, priority, and associated extensions, plus each viewer's display settings (font, colors, image transparency, and so on). Font family / size are shared between Light and Dark, while colors are edited per theme via the Light / Dark toggle inside each page (the per-viewer settings that used to live in the "Appearance" tab were consolidated here). User-built external viewer plugins (.dylib / .so / .dll) can also be loaded from a chosen plugins directory.

  

• External Apps: register launch commands for a terminal (t), editor (e), and so on. Placeholders pass the current path or selected files.

  

• Keybindings: every shortcut is customizable. Reset to defaults, choose presets (e.g. Total Commander style), or clear an assignment.

  

Settings file location: macOS ~/Library/Preferences/Farman/farman/settings.json / Linux ~/.config/Farman/farman/settings.json / Windows %APPDATA%\Farman\farman\settings.json

Bundled official viewers

Open a viewer with v, or choose one with Ctrl+Enter. Viewers work inline or in a separate window, with full-text search.

Text

Supported formats: txt, log, c / cpp / h, py, js, ts, java, json, xml, yml, ini, sh / bash / fish, etc.

Main features: automatic encoding detection, line numbers, word wrap, full-text search

Image

Supported formats: png, jpg, jpeg, gif, bmp, svg, webp, ico, tiff, tif, psd, heic, heif

Main features: zoom / Fit, transparency checker, GIF·WebP animation, 90° rotation, Info (Exif, ICC profile, DPI), PSD composite preview

Video / Audio

Supported formats: video: mp4, mov, webm, mkv, avi, wmv, mpeg, m2ts, ts, etc. / audio: mp3, flac, wav, aac, ogg, wma, etc.

Main features: playback, seek (click the bar to jump there), volume, loop, fullscreen, video zoom / fit to window, Info (metadata — format / codec / resolution / duration)

Markdown

Supported formats: md, markdown, mdown, mkd

Main features: rendered preview / raw-source toggle, tables and task lists, full-text search

PDF

Supported formats: pdf

Main features: page navigation, zoom / Fit, full-text search

CSV·TSV

Supported formats: csv, tsv

Main features: automatic delimiter detection, cell search, first row as header, lazy loading for huge files

Binary

Supported formats: any file not matched by the viewers above

Main features: hex dump with colored address / text columns

Each viewer's defaults (associated extensions, display options, etc.) can be changed under Settings → Plugins: select the viewer and open “Details” (default text encoding, image Fit / zoom, PDF view mode, CSV delimiter, media volume / autoplay, and so on).

About extension associations: when several viewers list the same extension, the viewer with the higher priority is chosen (resolved by priority among the extensions each viewer declares). There is no “first-wins” override that pins a specific extension to a specific viewer. If a file does not open in the viewer you want, add the extension to the preferred viewer and remove it from the competing one.

Install & updates

• Download: from the download section on the top page or GitHub Releases. Each asset ships with a .sha256 checksum.
• macOS: .dmg for Apple Silicon (arm64). Signed with a Developer ID and notarized, so it launches without a Gatekeeper warning.
• Windows: installer .exe or portable .zip (x64). Code signing is not yet in place.
• Linux: .AppImage or .deb (x86_64).
• Auto-update: checks for a new version on startup and updates in one click — download, verify (SHA256), install.
• What's New dialog: shows the changes once on first launch after an update. Reopen any time via Help → What's New...