Long-time listener of MPU here. I’ve been working on a file manager called Captain’s Deck and thought this community might appreciate it (or tear it
apart - either works).
The problem I was solving: I spend most of my day in the terminal and text editors, hands on the keyboard. Every time I had to use Finder, it felt
like hitting a wall - grab the mouse, click around, lose my flow. I wanted file management that worked like Vim.
What I built:
Dual-pane layout - see source and destination side by side
Vim-style navigation - hjkl to move, / to filter, gg to jump to top
Arrow keys too - not everyone wants Vim bindings, so both work simultaneously
Built-in terminal - backtick toggles it, and it syncs with your current directory (both ways via OSC 7)
Keyboard shortcuts for everything - F5 copy, F6 move, F7 new folder, F8 delete (Norton Commander style for those who remember)
Hi. I’m actually not alone, i have my brother who’s also coding but i’ve been making these apps for a looong time. It wasn’t hard but now the maintainance part feels like is 24/7. The truth is i enjoy it, that’s why i manage to stay engaged. And these 2 apps i use daily myself. Especiall Captain’s Deck, i begun developing it just for myself.
i actually never seen that before. It has a lot of similarities it seems judging just from the website. Captain’s Deck has a lot more features though unless Marta doesn’t mention them.
I do use mine though like this because i grew up with Norton Commander
(I know it’s not for everyone)
Wow I just tried it. On one level, truly amazing. On another level, holy cow a file manager that lives in my terminal. Do you still use Pine for email?
You’re hardcore. I think I’ll stick to a GUI file manager.
I will give Captain’s Deck a try. One caveat: On your sales page, you compare pricing to PathFinder and Forklift. However, many here use SetApp, which has them both as part of your subscription.
OK, haven’t even downloaded anything yet but the first full paragraph on your home page - what freakin’ font is that? Hate! lol (I see it is Instrument Serif. Not a fan…) This is in dark mode (just is, I didn’t select it) so maybe black on white is better?
No, It’s simply too much faff (or needs further tweaking). I may revisit in the future. My whole system and workflow is in a bit of a flux due to AI. I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t need or want AI handling my data. As Apple are clearly building this into their OS I think my days are numbered on Apple. I’m also not happy by the seeming defacto need of every app to add AI, so again, terminal apps help avoid this.
There is such a tremendous resource of good open source apps that run in the terminal. I would suspect that 70% of my work can be done in those.
I have Forklift and use it once a while. I always find myself going back to Finder… I am not sure why. I downloaded Captain’s Deck and love the keyboard shortcuts. My challenge is that if I don’t use it often, I will forget the keyboard shortcuts, then I might be back to Finder. There are a few shortcuts that I really like:
/ for filter. Quick filtering of a folder with a lot of files to look for the one file
tab to switch between panes and then F5 or F6 to copy/move that file to the other pane - very userful!
opt G and shift G to jump to top or bottom of the folder
backspace to go up one level
And the other thing which I like that Finder can’t give me is the monospace font on the Date Modified column. I love to see my dates in order instead of a being snakelike.
Thanks @jupe69
Still missing something? In MacOS/Finder style only double-clicking an application launches it—I haven’t found a keyboard shortcut (like the right-arrow or Enter key) that works.
There does not seem to be a way for me to add a tab to the Bookmark, is there? Drag and drop did not work. I looked up the keyboard shortcuts and there is none.
