nnn

nnn (n^3) is a full-featured terminal file manager written in C, designed to be extremely fast, lightweight, and keyboard-driven. Created by Arun Prakash Jana, nnn has over 19,500 stars as of 2026 and is one of the most popular terminal file managers for Linux and Unix-like systems. The entire binary is under 100KB, with zero runtime dependencies (beyond ncurses or standard C library). Key features include: directory navigation with instant switching (using number keys 1-4 for four quick-access contexts/bookmarks, each remembering its own current directory), file operations (copy, move, delete, rename, with multi-file selection using the selection buffer, and batch operations), file preview with syntax highlighting (integrating with bat for syntax highlighting, and supporting image previews via ueberzug, kitty graphics protocol, or sixel), search and filter (instant fuzzy filtering with in-line input, regex search, and directory-level filtering), plugins system (over 50 built-in plugins accessible via keyboard shortcuts, including: imgview for image preview, gitstatus for showing Git status in directories, mozjpeg for JPEG optimization, hexview for hex file viewing, pdfview for PDF preview, and drag-and-drop via dragon), bookmarks and shortcuts (user-defined key bindings for jumping to frequently visited directories), archive support (extracting and creating zip, tar, gzip, bzip2, xz, and 7z archives), trash integration (deleting to trash via trash-cli or gio trash), and launcher mode (opening files with user-defined applications). nnn also features a unique analyze mode that shows disk usage, file counts, and directory sizes. The file manager integrates with shell history, enabling quick cd to previously visited directories. Licensed under BSD-2-Clause.