fman

File viewers

Preview text, images and video inside the pane itself, without launching another app.

In this section

Text viewer

Read and quickly edit a text file inside the pane, with zoom, reload and tail mode.

Image viewer

Preview images in the pane, with zoom, panning and animated GIFs.

Video viewer

Play a video inside the pane with keyboard controls, and volume that is remembered.

Open or view

Make Enter open files in fman's internal viewer without losing folder navigation.

View file

Open the file under the cursor in fman's own viewer instead of an external application.

fman can show a file's contents inside the active pane, replacing the file list until you close it — no external app launch, no waiting. You can peek at (and, for text, quickly edit) a file without leaving fman.

Opening a viewer

Put the cursor on a file and run View file from the command palette, or View file in other pane to open it in the opposite pane and keep browsing. Neither has a default key binding — bind your own if you want one:

{ "keys": ["Ctrl+Alt+V"], "command": "view_file" }
Command name Palette label
view_file View file
view_file_in_other_pane View file in other pane

View, internal viewer and preview find the command in the palette too.

View file in other pane keeps the keyboard focus in the current pane, so you can keep moving the cursor down the folder and preview each file in the other pane as you go. With only one pane open it views in place instead.

The viewer is picked by file type

You don't choose which viewer opens:

File type Viewer Recognized by
Images Image viewer .png .jpg .jpeg .gif .bmp .webp .ico .svg
Video Video viewer .mp4 .m4v .mkv .webm .avi .mov .wmv .flv .mpg .mpeg .ogv .3gp .ts
Text-like Text viewer everything else that is not binary
Text Image Video
Editable Yes (UTF-8, untruncated) No No
Zoom Font size Scale + pan — (fills pane)
Extras auto-reload / tail mode animated GIFs play play/pause, seek, volume (persists)

Shared behaviour

  • Close: Escape, Enter or Backspace returns to the file list with the cursor back on the same file. Text edit mode with unsaved changes prompts first.
  • Switch panes: Tab / Shift+Tab, same as the file list. The viewer stays open; Tab back returns focus to it. (In text edit mode Tab types a tab.)
  • Own command palette: Ctrl+Shift+P opens a palette scoped to the viewer, separate from the global one.
  • Next / previous file: Next file and Previous file in the viewer palette step to the neighbouring file in the folder, following the pane's sort order, without closing the viewer. Advance only for same type (on by default) keeps the image viewer from stepping into a video; turn it off to walk across every viewable file, switching viewer as needed.
  • Bindable keys: viewer actions are rebound in a separate Viewer Key Bindings (<OS>).json, not the normal key bindings file.
  • One at a time per pane: opening a viewer replaces whatever viewer is already open in that pane. The other pane is unaffected.
  • Theme-aware: background and letterbox colors follow the active theme.

When a file cannot be viewed

  • A binary file (.exe, .zip, and similar — detected by reading a chunk and looking for a NUL byte) shows an alert instead of dumping garbled bytes into the text viewer.
  • A directory, or a path that is not a local file, shows an alert.
  • Nothing under the cursor shows "No file is selected!".

Pressing Enter or double-clicking still opens a file with the OS default application — viewing is a separate command. If you would rather have Enter use the internal viewer, see Open or view.

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