As a developer in tmux + terminal land, I tried every file manager and they all had the same problem:

I wanted VSCode's file explorer in the terminal: the project root pinned on the left, and the view grows as you go deeper instead of sliding.

So I forked Yazi. That's Jermi.

Traditional sliding window           Jermi anchored view
──────────────────────────────       ──────────────────────────────────────
src/  components/  Button.tsx        project/  src/  components/  Button.tsx
  ↑                                      ↑
  project root scrolled away             anchor stays pinned

Every other terminal file manager treats your view as a sliding window over the filesystem — go three folders deep, and your project root has scrolled off the left edge. You lose context. You forget where you started.

Jermi's one big insight: pin the starting directory.

The directory you launched in becomes the anchor — a fixed left boundary that never moves. Pressing h at the anchor is a no‑op (you can't go above your project root). Every navigation rebuilds the visible chain as [anchor → … → current], so the root is always on screen, and so is the path that got you here.

This single decision is what makes Jermi feel like VSCode's file explorer instead of like ranger:

Two features fall out of this directly:

Dynamic panes — instead of a fixed 2 or 3‑pane slot count, the view grows with depth.

Anchor isn't immutable — Shift+Left expands the anchor up to its parent, Shift+Right shrinks it down to wherever you are now. Treat your "project root" as a dial you can turn at runtime, not a CLI flag you set on launch.

There are two ways to install. Pick one.

If you don't know which to pick: choose Method 1. It's faster and doesn't require Rust.

Go to Releases → nightly and download the file matching your system:

Open a terminal in the folder where you downloaded the zip, then copy‑paste the block for your platform:

unzip yazi-aarch64-apple-darwin.zip
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
cp yazi-aarch64-apple-darwin/yazi ~/.local/bin/jermi
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/jermi

# Required on Apple Silicon — clears the quarantine xattr and ad-hoc signs
# the binary so macOS (AMFI) doesn't kill it on launch.
xattr -c ~/.local/bin/jermi
codesign --force --sign - ~/.local/bin/jermi

unzip yazi-x86_64-apple-darwin.zip
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
cp yazi-x86_64-apple-darwin/yazi ~/.local/bin/jermi
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/jermi
xattr -c ~/.local/bin/jermi
codesign --force --sign - ~/.local/bin/jermi

unzip <file>.zip
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
cp <file>/yazi ~/.local/bin/jermi
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/jermi

Expand-Archive yazi-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip -DestinationPath .
Copy-Item yazi-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc\yazi.exe $HOME\bin\jermi.exe

# zsh (default on macOS)
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc

# bash
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Then launch:

jermi

If you see file panes — you're done.

Requires the Rust toolchain.

git clone https://github.com/JeremyDong22/Jermi.git
cd Jermi
./install.sh

install.sh will:

1. Build the release binary with cargo build --release
2. Copy it to ~/.local/bin/jermi
3. On macOS, automatically run the xattr + codesign step

Then add ~/.local/bin to your PATH (see Step 3 above) and run jermi.

xattr -c ~/.local/bin/jermi
codesign --force --sign - ~/.local/bin/jermi

rm -rf *" 2"*

cd ~/your-project
jermi

That directory becomes the anchor. Navigate with j/k/h/l (or arrow keys). The root pane stays pinned no matter how deep you go.

All other Yazi keybindings still work — see the Yazi docs.

1. Anchor — the startup directory is saved as the "anchor" and defines the leftmost visible boundary.
2. Leave blocked at anchor — pressing h/Left at the anchor does nothing. You can't go above your project root.
3. pane_urls is auto‑derived — every cd rebuilds the chain [anchor, …, target] automatically; nothing is pushed/popped manually.
4. Shift+Arrow adjusts the anchor — move the boundary up or down without restarting.

Jermi inherits everything that makes Yazi great:

• Async I/O — instant directory loads
• Built‑in image preview (Kitty, iTerm2, Sixel, …)
• Lua plugin system
• Syntax highlighting
• And much more

MIT — same as Yazi.

• Yazi — the incredible terminal file manager this is forked from
• @sxyazi — creator of Yazi