Tauri Explorer

A file manager with Ctrl+P, Ctrl+Shift+F, and a command palette.

If you've ever opened your editor just to move files faster than your file manager lets you, this is for you. Fuzzy quick-open with frecency ranking, ripgrep content search, a palette for every action, rebindable keys, tabs and dual panes, a git commit graph, and a UI you can strip down to nothing. Tauri v2 (Rust) + Svelte 5, native on Linux, Windows, and macOS. No telemetry.

Status: early alpha. The author uses it daily as their main file manager, but it hasn't had other users yet — expect rough edges, especially outside Linux. Bug reports are very welcome: Command Palette → "Report Issue" files one from inside the app.

→ Try it in your browser — the showcase site is a working copy of the app. Press Ctrl+P.

Install

Grab the latest release — AppImage/deb/rpm, MSI, or dmg. On Linux it can even replace your system file picker (xdg-desktop-portal FileChooser backend).

# macOS (Apple Silicon or Intel) — one command; builds from source (checks
# for git/rustup/bun/Xcode CLT, clones, builds via the Tauri CLI), installs
# to /Applications, and clears the quarantine flag (sudo only if needed).
# Takes a few minutes since it compiles Rust — see #Building below for a
# manual walkthrough of the same steps.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xnmp/tauri-explorer/main/mac_install.sh | bash

Binaries aren't code-signed yet. Windows shows a SmartScreen warning on first launch. macOS reports un-notarized downloads as "damaged" and blocks them; after installing the downloaded Apple Silicon DMG, run xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/tauri-explorer.app to clear quarantine. The release page is the supported binary install route; the repository-root PKGBUILD provides an Arch source build. The older Homebrew cask and packaging/aur binary recipe are not current release channels.

On Arch, run ./arch_install.sh from a checkout to build and install the current source. Repeated runs reuse frontend assets when their inputs and output contents are unchanged, avoiding an unnecessary Rust release relink. Dependencies are still prepared and Cargo checks native changes each time. Use ./arch_install.sh --rebuild to force fresh frontend assets; source changes and missing or modified outputs rebuild automatically. Cold builds and builds after frontend or native changes still compile the optimized release. After generating new embedded assets, Cargo can require one additional native compile before its cache settles. The package under /usr is the only install: per-user copies of the launcher (~/.local/bin/tauri-explorer), desktop entry, or file-chooser portal files would shadow it, so the script moves them to ~/.local/state/tauri-explorer/retired-overrides/ and reports any still-running instance that needs to quit. To keep the slow build off the critical path, run ./arch_install.sh --build-only ahead of time (no sudo), then ./arch_install.sh --install-only installs that package in seconds; it warns if the checkout has changed since the build.

If a matching TraceExplorer .teplugin exists in $HOME/Repos/TraceExplorer/package, the Arch script queues the latest version for validated installation on the next app launch. Override its file or directory with --plugin-path PATH or TRACE_EXPLORER_PLUGIN_PATH. Missing packages are optional; plugin installation runs as the invoking user, after the host package succeeds. Startup uses the ordinary package validator and rollback flow. Failed requests move to pending-plugins/failed under the user config directory and surface as an error; rerun the script to retry a corrected package.

The default Arch package build timestamp follows the latest Git commit, or package.json modification time for source archives. Set SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH explicitly to override it.

File Cut verifies native clipboard ownership before moving the source, on X11, Wayland (with wl-clipboard, on compositors that support the clipboard data-control protocol, such as Sway, Hyprland and KDE Plasma), Windows, and macOS. On Wayland compositors without data-control, Cut is refused and Copy remains available. If another program changes the clipboard between Cut and Paste, Paste copies instead of moving. Where ownership cannot be proven (for example, a remote-desktop session that re-renders every clipboard change), Cut reports it and Copy remains available.

Use as system file picker

On Linux, Tauri Explorer provides an xdg-desktop-portal FileChooser backend. Portal backends are selected by your desktop portal configuration; installing the package alone does not replace an existing GTK or desktop-specific file picker.

To select Tauri Explorer for file-picker requests, create ~/.config/xdg-desktop-portal/portals.conf with:

[preferred]
org.freedesktop.impl.portal.FileChooser=tauri-explorer

Restart xdg-desktop-portal or sign out and back in after changing the file. The picker uses the requesting application's exported parent window when available. On Hyprland, floating rules may be used, but omit monitor center rules for the picker to let the compositor place it over its parent.

Inside the picker, type a name prefix to select an entry and press Enter to open a folder or confirm a file. Ctrl+F filters the active column; Escape clears the filter before cancelling the dialog. Ctrl+P opens recent files and frequently used folders, with fuzzy search as you type.

Windows: build and install from source

In PowerShell, one command downloads, builds, and installs the latest source:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xnmp/tauri-explorer/main/windows_install.ps1 | Invoke-Expression

The script identifies any missing Git, Rust, Bun, or Visual Studio C++ Build Tools and prints the corresponding winget command. To build an existing checkout instead, run ./windows_install.ps1 from its root.

Building

Requires Rust, Bun, and Tauri v2 prerequisites.

bun install
bun run start     # dev server
bun run build     # production build
bun run test      # unit tests
bun run test:e2e  # browser e2e

Nix

On Linux with Nix (flakes enabled), no manual dependency install needed:

nix run github:xnmp/tauri-explorer          # build + launch, no install
nix profile install github:xnmp/tauri-explorer  # install to your profile

nix build github:xnmp/tauri-explorer produces the same release binary at ./result/bin/tauri-explorer, built via nixpkgs' cargo-tauri.hook (same --profile release + tauri/custom-protocol path the Tauri CLI itself uses — not a bare cargo build --release, which yields a dev-mode binary).

For local development, nix develop (or .envrc + direnv) drops you into a shell with the Rust toolchain, Bun, Node, and every WebKitGTK/GTK system dependency Tauri v2 needs already on PKG_CONFIG_PATH — no distro package install required:

nix develop
bun install
bun run start

Performance

Measured on Linux (release build, warm cache): a flat 100,000-entry folder opens in a median 266 ms and a 500,000-entry one in 1.65 s; back/forward/up into the 100k folder take 250–270 ms. Method, hardware, component benchmarks and reproduction steps: docs/performance.md.

Status

Actively developed — see the changelog and releases for what's new. If you hit a bug: Command Palette → "Report Issue", or open an issue. Submitted reports and selected images become public. If in-app submission fails, text is saved for retry and images remain available until the app window closes. The GitHub issue form opens when a new issue is safe to create; add images manually there.