Xylem manual

Xylem is a text-mode file manager inspired by XTree and ZTreeWin: a directory tree on top, the files of the current directory below, and statistics on the right. It logs (reads) directories into memory, so you can tag files across a whole branch and copy, move, delete, compare or rename them in one go.

Xylem treats untrusted files as hostile: it should never crash, hang, run code, write outside the destination or exhaust memory because of what a file contains or how it is named. Nevertheless, bugs happen. See the security statement in the README for the full list of safeguards and recommendations.

F1 (or Alt+H, for terminals that keep F1 for themselves) opens help about what you are doing: inside a prompt, the help for that prompt; in the tree or the file window, the help for that window. In the help, Tab and Shift+Tab pick a link, Enter follows it, Backspace goes back, I shows this index, K the keys in effect, L switches the language and Esc closes.

Help with the translations: the versions of this manual in Spanish, French, German and Chinese have not been reviewed by native speakers. If you read one of these languages and find an error or something that sounds odd, please suggest an improvement: https://github.com/andrelnfernandes/xylem/issues.

Windows and views

• The tree window: moving around, logging, Branch and Showall
• The file window: display modes, Autoview, opening files
• Split screen: two windows side by side
• The viewer: text and hex, search, syntax colors
• Filtering lines: & in the viewer, with a regular expression guide
• Searching tagged files: Ctrl+S and Ctrl+V
• Information: Info, Avail, statistics and directory sizes
• Disk usage: where the space goes (Alt+W)
• Duplicates: files and folders with the same contents (Alt+Y)

Working with files

• Tags and group operations
• Copy and Move, picking a folder
• Delete, trash and Prune
• Rename and batch rename
• Permissions and dates
• Filespec: the file filter
• Treespec and Log
• Compare and Sort
• Edit, eXecute and Batch
• Archives: ZIP, 7z and TAR

Beyond XTree

• The built-in terminal
• Remote machines (SSH): browse another machine, its terminal
• Cloud storage (rclone): Google Drive, S3 and others
• Git
• Bookmarks

Setting up

• Configuration: the F12 screen, themes, keys
• Quitting and changing the shell’s directory
• Windows
• Comparison with ZTreeWin
• The keys in effect: press K in the help.