A two-panel visual shell for Linux terminals, in the spirit of Midnight Commander.

• Mouse support.
• Two panels for browsing directories side by side; one panel is active at a time.
• Vertical and horizontal panel layout.
• Multiple file selection (tagging), including pattern-based select/unselect groups.
• Quick file operations: copy or move between the two panels, delete etc.
• Sort panel contents by different criteria.
• Directory bookmarks and per-panel navigation history.
• Quicksearch and filtering within a panel.
• A command line below the panels, with popups for command history search and bash-style completion, and quick ways to inject names and paths.
• A configurable user menu of shell commands, with macro substitution for file/path arguments.
• A configurable button bar.
• Two ways to run shell commands: a stateless mode (one-off commands with a scrollable output overlay) and a subshell mode (a persistent shell session you can drop into).
• Fully configurable key bindings, color scheme, and startup behavior via a JSON config file.
• Find other convenient features not mentioned here in the cheat sheet.

User menu	Command-line autocompletion

On any x86_64 Linux, install the latest release's statically-linked build with one command:

curl -fsSL https://github.com/aranor01/sc/releases/latest/download/install.sh | bash

To uninstall, run the same script with --uninstall (note the extra bash -s --, needed to pass the flag through the pipe):

curl -fsSL https://github.com/aranor01/sc/releases/latest/download/install.sh | bash -s -- --uninstall

Or build it yourself. Requires a recent Rust toolchain (rustup.rs).

Build and run from source:

cargo build --release
./target/release/sc

Or build a Debian package with cargo-deb:

cargo install cargo-deb
SC_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr cargo deb
sudo dpkg -i target/debian/sc_*.deb

Or build an RPM package with cargo-generate-rpm (unlike cargo-deb, it doesn't build for you, so run cargo build first):

cargo install cargo-generate-rpm
SC_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr cargo build --release
cargo generate-rpm
sudo rpm -ivh target/generate-rpm/sc-*.rpm

To produce a statically-linked binary (useful for installing on distros with an older or different glibc than your build machine), target musl and pass --target to whichever packager you use (cargo-deb also needs --no-build, otherwise it triggers its own dynamically-linked build):

rustup target add x86_64-unknown-linux-musl
SC_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr cargo build --release --target x86_64-unknown-linux-musl
cargo deb --variant musl --target x86_64-unknown-linux-musl --no-build
cargo generate-rpm --target x86_64-unknown-linux-musl

--variant musl picks up the [package.metadata.deb.variants.musl] override in Cargo.toml, which skips shared-library dependency detection — a static binary has none, so the default $auto otherwise just prints a harmless warning.

sc [OPTIONS] [DIR1] [DIR2]

Run sc --help for the full list of options, or see docs/CommandLineArgs.md for the complete reference, including how DIR1/DIR2 interact with the --restore-paths option.

See docs/Configuration.md Default key bindings are listed in docs/CheatSheet.md

The command line and the panels work together: shortcuts let you pull file names and paths, without typing them by hand.

For example, if you want to create an archive in a directory containing all markdown files in another directory (*.md) except one, you can:

• Navigate to the directory with the markdown files
• Press +, type *.md and then press Enter
• Select the file that you want to exclude and Press Ins (or right click on it).
• Change active panel with Tab
• Navigate to the directory where you want to create the archive
• Type tar czf archive.tar.gz -C on the command line.
• Press Ctrl-x Ctrl-p to append the other panel's directory.
• Add a space.
• Press Ctrl-x Ctrl-t to append the tagged files from the other panel.
• Press Enter

The same idea works for quick one-off commands on a single file: Ctrl-Enter inserts the selected file's name at the cursor, although you may prefer the auto completion (Alt-Tab or Ctrl-Space). See docs/CheatSheet.md for the complete list of command-line shortcuts.

Add entries to the "menu" array in ~/.config/sc/config.json (see docs/Configuration.md for the full schema). Each entry needs a label and a command; command can reference the selected file, the tagged files, or either panel's directory using the macros documented in docs/MacroSubstitution.md. An optional keys runs the command directly without opening the menu, and add_to_bar: true also shows it as a button in the button bar (see Customizing the Button Bar below).

If ~/.config/sc/config.json doesn't exist yet, sc creates one the first time it runs, already wired up with View / Edit / Edit config entries — so you're extending a working file, not starting from a blank one.

Menu edits take effect the next time you press F2 — no need to restart sc. Direct keys shortcuts and add_to_bar buttons pick up the change too, but only once F2 has been pressed at least once after saving (they aren't reloaded independently).

Two examples:

{
  "menu": [
    // Archive the tagged files (or the selected one) straight into the other panel.
    { "label": "Archive to other panel", "command": "tar czf %D/archive.tar.gz %s" },

    // Similar to the manual example in "Combining panels and the command line"
    { "label": "Archive from other panel", "command": "tar czf \"`basename %D`\".tar.gz -C %D %S" },

    // Count lines in the tagged files, or the selected file if none are tagged.
    { "label": "Word count", "command": "wc -l %s", "keys": "F9" }
  ]
}

%D is the other panel's directory and %s is the tagged files (or the selected file, if none are tagged) — see docs/MacroSubstitution.md for the rest. More complex command should delegate to a script file and should check if nothing (or ..) is selected.

The button bar always shows the built-in function-key actions (Copy, Move, Delete, ...). To add your own commands to it, give a menu entry (see above) "add_to_bar": true:

{
  "menu": [
    { "label": "Grep", "command": "grep -rn %s . | less", "keys": "F11", "add_to_bar": true },
    { "label": "Disk usage", "command": "du -sh %d", "add_to_bar": true }
  ]
}

Entries with a function-key keys binding take that key's slot in the bar, sorted by key number; entries without one are appended after, in the order they appear in the config file. Bar colors come from the button_bar_* keys in the color scheme (see docs/Configuration.md).

sc can be driven from outside its own UI. This feature is particularly useful in combination with user-menu commands. The set of actions that can be triggered will grow, but you can already inject strings in the command line, select or filter files in the panel, and more. See docs/IpcActions.md for the full list of actions and examples.

See CHANGELOG.md for release history.

MIT — see LICENSE.