Learn how to use tutorial

This tutorial will teach you how to use superfile step by step.

Caution

If you haven’t installed superfile yet, please click here.

Tip

A full list of hotkeys are available here

Hotkeys tutorial

Let’s start by running superfile! Open a terminal, type spf and press enter.

To exit, press q or esc.

Panel navigation

Once superfile is running, it displays five panels:

• sidebar
• file
• processes
• metadata
• clipboard
• command execution bar

The file panel is the focused view by default. You can change focus onto three other panels.

Press s to focus on the sidebar.

Press p to focus on the processes.

Press m to focus on the metadata.

Press : to open command execution bar.

To return focus back onto the file panel, press the same hotkey again.

For command execution bar you need press esc or ctrl+c

You can also press f to show or hide the preview window.

Also press F to hide or show all footer panel.

Tip

The size of the folder will only be shown when you focus on the metadata.

For more detailed metadata, click here to install the metadata plugin.

To create more file panels, press n. Press w to close the focused file panel.

To move through multiple file panels, press tab or L (shift+l). To move to the previous panel, press shift+left or H (shift+h).

Panel movement

superfile provides multiple hotkeys to move through directories. The angle bracket cursor > tells you where you are.

While focused on the file panel, move the cursor up with up or k and down with down or j.

After navigating to the your file/folder, press enter or l to confirm your selection. Files are opened with your default application (if none set, there will be no response) and folders are opened for viewing. Press h or backspace to return to the parent directory.

Folders can be pinned to the sidebar panel. Navigate to and open your folder. Press P (shift+p) to pin or unpin it.

Press o to bring up the sort options menu. You can sort by:

• Name
• Size
• Date Modified

Press enter to confirm your sort option. Press esc, o, or ctrl+c to cancel. To reverse the order of the sort, press R (shift+r).

Press / to bring up the search bar. Type the name (you may need to first delete the / if it auto-populates). superfile searches in the current directory and dynamically displays the results. To exit the search bar, press ctrl+c or esc.

Press . to show or hide dotfiles.

Selection mode

Use selection mode for bulk operations. If you are familiar with Vim, selection mode is similar to Vim’s visual mode.

Press v to toggle between selection mode and normal (browser) mode.

Once in selection mode, you can perform file operations on all selected files/folders. Panel movement hotkeys also work in selection mode.

Tip

The following operations can only be performed while in selection mode. Your current mode is displayed in the lower-right corner of the file panel (Select or Browser).

To make selections, navigate to your file/folder and press enter or L (shift+l). Press the same key again to deselect.

This may become tedious when you have a large number of items. Instead, you can press shift+up or K (shift+k) to select everything above the cursor. Press shift+down or J (shift+j) to select everything below the cursor.

You can also press A (shift+a) to select everything in the current directory.

File operations

Note

Only copy, cut and delete can be used in selection mode.

Now let’s learn how to perform file operations.

Create a new file with ctrl+n. Type your new file’s name and press enter. To create a new folder, add / to the end of the name.

Tip

You can create a directory, subdirectory and file in one string. For example:

directory/subdirectory/filename

To rename, point your cursor at a file/folder and press ctrl+r.

To copy, you can press ctrl+c.

To cut, you can press ctrl+x.

Both cut and copied items are shown in the clipboard panel (lower-right corner). The progress of your operations is displayed in the processes panel (lower-left corner).

To paste, you can press ctrl+v.

Note

In some terminals, for example Windows Powershell, ctrl+v pastes input from clipboard to terminal. So, ctrl+v might not work for paste. Either you can add ctrl+w hotkey for paste, or override default behaviour of ctrl+v on your terminal.

To delete, you can press ctrl+d

Note

The deletion here is not direct deletion, but will be placed in the trash can. However, when you use an external hard drive, it will be deleted directly.

To compress, press ctrl+a. To decompress, press ctrl+e.

To open a file with an editor, press e.

To open the current directory with an editor, press E (shift+e).

To change the default file editor, you can set the EDITOR environment variable in your terminal or you can use the editor config option (take priority over EDITOR environment variable). To change the default directory editor, you can use the dir_editor config option. For example:

EDITOR=nvim

This will set Neovim as your default editor. After setting this, Neovim will be used when opening files with the e key bindings.

editor = "nano"
dir_editor = "vi"

These are changes in config file. See superfile-config for more info. This will set nano as your default editor, and vi as your default directory editor. After setting this, nano will be used when opening files with the e key bindings, and vi will be used to open current directory with E key bindings.

Caution

If your directory editor does not support opening the current directory with an editor, you may encounter an error when pressing E.

(Sorry, this video has a little bit of lag) demo video