chvarkov 📂

chvarkov is a modern, high-performance file manager designed for the GNOME desktop and macOS. It brings the efficiency of macOS-style Miller Columns to both platforms, built from the ground up using Rust, GTK4, and Libadwaita.

Miller Columns — light	Miller Columns — dark
Docked live preview	Adaptive (narrow) layout

Gallery images live in docs/screenshots/ — see that folder's README for the expected filenames.

• Miller Columns Navigation: Navigate deep directory structures with ease using side-by-side columns (plus Icon and List views).
• Cross-Platform: Native support for both Linux (GNOME) and macOS.
• Native Resizing: Smoothly resize any column or preview pane using native handles.
• Live Previews: Selecting a file opens a preview docked to the right edge — file details, metadata, large icons, images, video, and syntax-highlighted text — staying pinned in place as you navigate. Press Space for a larger floating Quick Look.
• Modern UI: Adheres to Libadwaita standards for a clean, responsive interface, with the sidebar, header bar, breadcrumb, and footer aligned to a single consistent height.
• Adaptive Sidebar: Automatically collapses into an overlay on smaller screens.
• Native Thumbnails: Native support for file thumbnails in all view types.
• Keyboard First & Multi-Selection: Fully navigable via keyboard, with standard multi-selection (Shift, Ctrl, Ctrl+A).

• Full Cut / Copy / Paste with system-clipboard interop — copy in chvarkov and paste in Finder / GNOME Files (and vice-versa).
• New Folder and New Empty File (with inline naming), Duplicate, Move to… / Copy to…, Rename, Create Link (symlink), and Compress to Zip.
• Move to Trash and Delete Permanently (with a confirmation prompt), all operating on the whole selection.
• Undo / Redo (Ctrl/Cmd+Z, Ctrl+Shift+Z, plus an Undo button on the result toast) for move, rename, trash, copy, duplicate, and create — a bounded history of the last 16 operations. Undoing a copy/duplicate/create sends the new items to Trash so nothing is lost; undo never overwrites (a clashing original is restored as name (2)).
• Open in Terminal, Copy Path / URI / Name, and Email / Share (native macOS Share sheet; xdg-email on Linux).

• Permission-aware: actions you don't have rights to perform are hidden from the menu (driven by the filesystem's reported capabilities).
• Conflict handling: Replace / Skip / Keep Both on name collisions, with directory Merge instead of destructive overwrite, and an "apply to all" option for batches.
• Data-loss guards (modeled on GNOME Nautilus): refuses to copy/move a folder into itself, never silently replaces a directory, preserves symlinks instead of dereferencing them, and validates rename input.

• Default file manager: can be registered to open folders via xdg-open and "Open With" (see Set as default file manager).

Additional operations — Move to…, Copy to…, Compress, Open in Terminal, Copy Path/URI/Name, Email, Share — are available from the right-click context menu (only the entries you have permission to perform are shown).

Download Chvarkov-macos-aarch64.zip (Apple Silicon / M-series) from the Releases Page, extract it, and move Chvarkov.app to your /Applications folder.

Intel Mac? GitHub no longer offers Intel macOS CI runners, so prebuilt Intel binaries aren't published. On an Intel Mac you can build one yourself with ./build.sh macos (see Building from Source).

"Chvarkov.app is damaged and can't be opened"? The app is ad-hoc signed but not notarized (no paid Apple Developer account), so macOS quarantines it on download. Clear the quarantine flag once after moving it to /Applications:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Chvarkov.app

Then open it normally.

Note: You must have the system dependencies installed:

brew install pkg-config gtk4 libadwaita adwaita-icon-theme gtksourceview5

For video previews on macOS, GStreamer is also required:

brew install gstreamer gst-plugins-base gst-plugins-good gst-libav

Download chvarkov-linux-amd64.AppImage from the Releases Page, then:

chmod +x chvarkov-linux-amd64.AppImage
./chvarkov-linux-amd64.AppImage

All GTK4/Adwaita/GtkSourceView libraries are bundled inside the AppImage.

Download chvarkov-linux-amd64.flatpak from the Releases Page, then:

flatpak install --user chvarkov-linux-amd64.flatpak
flatpak run net.nocopypaste.chvarkov

Requires Homebrew dependencies listed in Prerequisites.

./build.sh macos

This creates Chvarkov.app in the project root.

Requires GTK4, Libadwaita and GtkSourceView 5 to be installed on your system:

sudo pacman -S gtk4 libadwaita gtksourceview5

sudo dnf install gtk4 libadwaita gtksourceview5

sudo apt install libgtk-4-1 libadwaita-1-0 libgtksourceview-5-0

Then download chvarkov-linux-amd64.tar.gz, extract and run:

tar -xzf chvarkov-linux-amd64.tar.gz
./chvarkov

• Rust: Install Rust
• Development headers:
  • macOS (Homebrew): brew install pkg-config gtk4 libadwaita adwaita-icon-theme gtksourceview5 gstreamer gst-plugins-base gst-plugins-good gst-libav
  • Arch Linux: sudo pacman -S gtk4 libadwaita gtksourceview5 gst-plugins-good
  • Fedora: sudo dnf install gtk4-devel libadwaita-devel gtksourceview5-devel gstreamer1-plugins-good
  • Ubuntu/Debian: sudo apt install libgtk-4-dev libadwaita-1-dev libgtksourceview-5-dev libgstreamer1.0-dev gstreamer1.0-plugins-good

git clone https://github.com/eboye/chvarkov.git
cd chvarkov
cargo xtask install

This builds the binary, installs it to ~/.local/bin/chvarkov, registers the GSettings schema, .desktop entry and icon. Make sure ~/.local/bin is in your $PATH.

To install to /usr/local instead (requires sudo):

sudo cargo xtask install --system

To uninstall:

cargo xtask uninstall          # from ~/.local
sudo cargo xtask uninstall --system

cargo run --release

For a development experience similar to npm watch, we recommend using cargo-watch.

1. Install cargo-watch:

   cargo install cargo-watch

2. Run the watch command:

   cargo watch -c -x run

After installing (cargo xtask install), register chvarkov as the handler for folders so it opens from xdg-open, file links, and the "Open With" menu:

xdg-mime default net.nocopypaste.chvarkov.desktop inode/directory

Then opening a folder launches chvarkov at that path:

xdg-open ~/Downloads

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to open issues or submit pull requests.

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.