Orchard Commander

A two-panel file manager for macOS, Windows and Linux in the classic keyboard-driven style. It shows two folders side by side and is driven by the keyboard: F5 copies, F6 moves, F7 creates a folder, F8 moves files to the trash. It previews code, images, PDFs, audio and video, edits text files (F4), opens archives and SFTP, SMB, WebDAV and S3 servers in a panel, and has a file search, a multi-rename tool and a terminal.

The app is written in Rust, drawn on the GPU (wgpu) and made to look like a terminal program.

Website: https://sandboxly.github.io/orchard-commander/

Install

System	Download	Package manager
macOS 12 or later, Apple silicon	Orchard-Commander-macOS.dmg	brew install --cask sandboxly/tap/orchard-commander
Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit	Installer, portable zip
Linux, x86-64	AppImage, .deb, .rpm, .tar.gz

Omarchy and other Arch-based systems — one command, no root except for runtime libraries:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sandboxly/orchard-commander/main/packaging/omarchy/install.sh | bash

Add -s -- --bind --default --free-f9 after bash to bind Super+Ctrl+Shift+F, open folders in Orchard Commander and free F9 from Omarchy's dictation key; -s -- --uninstall removes it. Rerun the command to update. A PKGBUILD for the AUR package orchard-commander-bin is in packaging/omarchy/.

All versions are on the releases page.

If you enjoy Orchard Commander, you can buy me a coffee.

Documentation

The user manual covers everything from the first start to the keyboard reference. Its source is in docs/manual.

Run from source

cargo run -p orchard-commander -- [LEFT_DIR] [RIGHT_DIR]

Needs Rust 1.90 or later. PDFium (PDF previews) and FFmpeg (audio and video) are native libraries outside Cargo; fetch them into vendor/ once:

scripts/fetch-pdfium.sh                # debug builds find vendor/pdfium on their own
scripts/fetch-ffmpeg.sh                # Windows and Linux: LGPL shared libraries
packaging/macos/build-ffmpeg.sh        # macOS: LGPL build from source

Build against them with FFMPEG_DIR=vendor/ffmpeg/<platform> and put the libraries on the library path for cargo run and cargo test (PATH on Windows, LD_LIBRARY_PATH on Linux). bindgen needs libclang (libclang-dev on Linux, LIBCLANG_PATH on Windows).

Building the app

All packages (Windows installer and zip, AppImage, .deb, .rpm, tar.gz, and the signed, notarized macOS dmg) are built by CI. On a Mac the dmg can also be built locally:

packaging/macos/package.sh --notarize

It produces dist/Orchard Commander.app and dist/Orchard-Commander-macOS.dmg. Check any build with orchard-commander --self-test, which exercises the renderer, fonts, archives, PDFium, FFmpeg, the config folder and the server connection types.

On macOS the signature matters beyond distribution: macOS grants Local Network access (needed for servers on the LAN) and Keychain access to saved passwords per code signature. An ad-hoc signed build counts as a new app every time, and an unbundled cargo run binary may be silently blocked from the local network ("No route to host"). package.sh signs with $OC_CODESIGN_IDENTITY or --identity NAME, otherwise the first "Developer ID Application" certificate in the keychain.

Versioning, native libraries, licenses, CI and the release steps: docs/RELEASING.md.

Development

cargo test --workspace
cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets -- -D warnings

The SFTP tests run an in-process SSH server; the WebDAV, S3 and SMB tests use WsgiDAV, moto and impacket from a Python environment (OC_TEST_PYTHON) and Samba, OpenSSH and MinIO in Docker. Tests whose server isn't available skip.

Crate	Role
oc-vfs	File system interface (FileSystem, VPath, capability flags), copy/move/trash across file systems, the file system contract (testing)
oc-local	The local disk: listing, native copy, trash, open
oc-archive	zip, tar (plain/gz/bz2/xz), gz/bz2/xz, 7z and RAR (vendored UnRAR), read-only
oc-provider	Connection types: FileSystemProvider, registry, addresses
oc-sftp, oc-smb, oc-remote-http	SFTP, SMB, WebDAV and S3 file systems
oc-config	Settings, bookmarks, saved connections, keychain (same files as 1.x); color schemes from orchard-theme
oc-preview, oc-pdf, oc-media	Previewer interface, registry and built-in previewers; PDFium; FFmpeg playback
oc-search, oc-rename, oc-term	Find files, multi-rename, terminal sessions
oc-ui	All UI state and logic: commands, menus, panels, dialogs, features
app	The orchard-commander binary: event loop, windows, native menu

Shared with the other Orchard apps, from the orchard-commons repository (git dependencies pinned to a tag in the workspace Cargo.toml):

Crate	Role
orchard-grid	GPU character-grid renderer (wgpu)
orchard-theme	Color schemes (built-ins and the color-schemes/ folder), grid colors, the config directory's location
orchard-metadata	File metadata providers for multi-rename (audio tags, video and image properties, EXIF)

To change them alongside this repository, point Cargo at a local checkout with a local [patch] that stays out of commits (see CLAUDE.md).

Where a UI feature goes and how it fits in: docs/ARCHITECTURE.md.

Adding a file system

1. The file system implements oc_vfs::FileSystem: listing, stat, path handling and open_read; writable ones add mkdir, remove, open_write (and rename), declared through capabilities() (writable, can_trash, can_rename, watchable). The UI only uses VPath values and these flags, so copy/move, previews and archives stored on it work without UI changes.
2. The connection type implements oc_provider::FileSystemProvider: an address scheme, the fields of its connection dialog (the form is generated from them), parse_url / format_url, and connect, which returns the file system and may ask the user through its ConnectContext (that is how SFTP asks to trust a host key).

Register it with oc_provider::register at start (see register_connection_types in app/src/main.rs). Check the implementation with oc_vfs::testing::check_filesystem(root), which every built-in file system passes; oc_vfs::testing::MemFS is a small in-memory example.

Adding a previewer

A previewer implements oc_preview::Previewer (see the docs of crates/oc-preview/src/api.rs):

• score(&FileInfo) says how well it fits a file: by extension, size, or the first bytes if needs_head is true. Highest score wins; Score::FORMAT (100) for "this is my format", Score::FALLBACK (1) for "I can show anything".
• access() declares what it reads; load(src, ctx) gets it from the PreviewSource on a worker thread and returns Loaded (PreviewData plus an info line). It never learns which file system the file is on.
• Return PreviewError::CannotPreview to let the next previewer try, or ShowMessage to show a message instead.
• available() returns false when an optional dependency is missing.

Register built-ins in crates/oc-preview/src/builtin/mod.rs. The contract test in crates/oc-preview/src/tests/contract.rs runs every built-in previewer against empty, garbage and valid files, so a new one is checked automatically.

License

MIT, see LICENSE. The packages bundle FFmpeg (LGPL), PDFium and UnRAR; their license texts are in licenses.