I can't believe no one mentioned this, but: remote access.

I spend most of my day connected to machines via SSH and yazi offers a great UX with file previews and all. Using kitty I even get image previews in the terminal.

I can navigate without using my mouse. It's faster for me. You can create tabs, copy and paste files, extract compressed files, run commands, and so much more without lofting my hand. My favorite feature is the ability to preview files without even opening them. I'm relatively new to linux too.

Download 5 seasons of some show from multiple sources or some artist's entire discography, and want to normalize all the file names? It is way easier in the terminal.

I'll check this out, but I use https://github.com/stevearc/oil.nvim for such tasks as I have nvim's full suite of editor commands to rename all the files way faster than I could in a GUI. I'm sure there are GUI apps to perform a similar task, but I already know how to use nvim.

• Terminal file manager are useful on a server over ssh.
• ripgrep and fd support is better than any GUI file manager find and replace.
• Some people like using vim keybindings
• The three panel view is really useful. On the left is the parent folder, the middle the current and on the right a preview, e.g. the selected folder or the contents of a picture or a text file. It's faster to navigate and pop back into the shell.

You can probably do some more advance tasks via CLI. Also usually lists information faster. But honestly you will be overall fine with GUI a majority of the time.

Some people just like being in the terminal.

Other people have given great reasons, but I will also mention that as someone who lives inside the terminal it's often faster and easier to open it right there rather than getting a GUI one going. I do still use one for things that are easier to do with a graphical file manager though, no problem having both

I wouldn't bother unless you find yourself doing more through the terminal than through GUIs.

I don't have a built-in file browser (not using a DE, just i3 window manager), so I use ranger and pure GNU coreutils commands mostly but I still find myself missing the drag-and-drop features that FreeDesktop integration provides for stuff like nautilus.

I'm fairly new to Linux also, Debian with Gnome.

I need CLI filemanager when doing something outside home directory etc.

For example fix a desktop shortcut and you can't start Nautilus "as an administrator " afaik. Or it won't ask for root password.

Yes. I switched to yazi from ranger. File previews is so much better. Image previews dont hog up ram or crash your manager. It has everything and more like opening encrypted archives, plugin support, themes. I use 2 plugins, one to compress files and the other to display present directory size.

It's not just the features but the app itself is magnificent. I have never seen such a goid looking tui app.

Switched from ranger to yazi months ago. There's some UI choices that I miss but the configuration via toml and lua plugins is way better than rangers.

I would like to find a git modeline plugin. Its wild to me that they have a zoxide integrated and keybound by default but no git integration.

I think it really depends on your specific use case.

For me, it has completely replaced ranger — I initially developed it to replace my ranger, and its original name was ranger-rs, but then I realized that was too long for frequent type, so I changed it to yazi :D

What are your primary use cases for Yazi? I'm trying to see if it'll fit into my workflow.

I've been experimenting with it on my MacBook Pro. When I navigate to a few Go projects I'm working on, syntax highlighting only seems to be available in the file preview. After that, it appears to just open in plain Vi.

At work, I use Windows and primarily code in C#.

Is Yazi more geared towards file management?

Starhacking is a thing. When you see words like “blazing fast” & emoji all over the README it show the maker is treating the code as marketing—& MS GitHub is a social media platform with algorithms.

👋🏻 Hi, Yazi author here, thanks for your interest in it!

I created an account to answer this question, for me, getting 15k stars is totally not surprising and should be quite expected since I've been working hard to manage the Yazi community. Let me try my best to explain where these stars are coming from and why:

• Yazi is undergoing very active development, there's a cool graph on GitHub that reflects the activity of the project, https://github.com/sxyazi/yazi/graphs/contributors
• I put a lot of effort into writing release notes to showcase the latest features to users, presenting this information in the best way possible - you can see these at Yazi Releases.
• Yazi is a Rust app, and many people are interested in Rust, which already has a lot of excellent projects (like ripgrep, bat, fd, exa, starship, etc.), so Yazi benefits from this good reputation — especially since it genuinely delivers on its promises in README: fast, efficient, user-friendly, and customizable.
• Yazi is a versatile file manager that, unlike broot, leans more towards fast file navigation rather than file management. I explained the differences in this Reddit comment.
• Yazi integrates well with other tools (like Neovim and Helix), which will attract users from those platforms:
  • Neovim plugins like https://github.com/mikavilpas/yazi.nvim
  • Helix + Zellij integration https://yazi-rs.github.io/docs/tips#helix-with-zellij
• Yazi has a great plugin ecosystem — you can check out all the community plugins at https://yazi-rs.github.io/docs/resources and https://github.com/AnirudhG07/awesome-yazi
• I post about each major release on Reddit, which usually gets a lot of attention, making it one of the main sources of these stars, like this one and this one.
• Yazi occasionally appears in tech blogs or videos, such as this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one, which also brings in a lot of stars.
• Some Yazi users share it on other platforms, like Hacker News here and Lemmy like this post (hey! TIL about this platform, it's awesome!).
• I promote it occasionally on my personal Twitter, which usually brings good attention, like this tweet and this one.
• Yazi often appears on GitHub Trending, where a lot of people look, which can also lead to some stars, such as this one - 🥇 Yazi reached number one on the Rust category. It tends to trend due to new releases or someone making a new introduction video about Yazi.
• Yazi has a strong Discord community — our official Discord server has 800+ members, and many users enjoy sharing the tools they use in other servers, with Yazi being one of them. This also contributes to getting some stars. I've joined a lot of Discord servers and occasionally see people sharing about Yazi.
• Once I have time, I'll exchange my thoughts with users and potential users, just like I'm doing now - good communication is key to everything!

I hope this helps address your confusion or concerns. I've been doing my best to improve Yazi - I've spent almost all my free time maintaining it. These stars feel like recognition and appreciation for my efforts, so it feels pretty natural to me ;)

That's because it works very well, and the main developer is super active (I've contributed and made some plugins so have interacted with them a fair bit)

Like the other comment said yes and it lives up to it's sparkly promises. You should check zen browsers stars, it got the same amount in like a month or two.

Think you may need to build it from cargo/rust

https://www.linuxlinks.com/yazi-terminal-file-manager/

This is kinda funny because I've installed it on Mint and Pop OS and I completely forgot how.

Admittedly I haven't looked into too many rust applications but IME they generally don't have a deb/rpm/binary or whatever. I've always had to cargo them in - it's a relatively painless process. My understanding is that, in a similar fashion to python, you have to have the same dependencies on the source and target machine and cargo handles that in rusts case