Text viewer

The text viewer shows a file's contents directly inside the active pane, in place of the file list. It opens read-only, so you can peek at a file without waiting on an external editor — and switch it to editable when you want to make a quick change.

Usage

1. 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 this pane's file list visible).
2. The contents fill the pane. Arrow keys move the cursor, Shift+arrow selects, the mouse selects too, and long lines wrap to the pane width.
3. Escape, Enter or Backspace closes the viewer and puts the cursor back on the same file.
4. Tab switches to the other pane. The viewer stays open; Tab again brings focus straight back to it.
5. Ctrl+Shift+P opens the viewer's own command palette.

Editing

The viewer opens read-only. Press Ctrl+Shift+P for its own palette — a fuzzy-search picker scoped to this viewer, separate from fman's global command palette.

In view mode: Exit viewer, Edit file, Reload from disk, Enable/Disable auto-reload, Enable/Disable tail mode (follow end), Increase font size, Decrease font size, Reset font size.

In edit mode: Save file, Save file as…, Revert / reload from disk, Enable/Disable auto-reload, Enable/Disable tail mode (follow end), Increase font size, Decrease font size, Reset font size, Exit viewer.

• Not every file can be edited. Edit file only makes the buffer editable if the file was not size-truncated and its bytes are strict UTF-8 — the replacement decoding used for display is lossy, so saving it back would corrupt the original. A file that does not qualify gets an alert explaining why instead of edit mode.
• Tab behaves differently in edit mode. In view mode it switches panes; once editing, it types a literal tab character. Use Exit viewer to leave edit mode.
• Unsaved changes are protected. Exit viewer prompts Save / Discard / Cancel; Revert / reload from disk prompts Discard / Cancel. Running View file on a different file while this pane has unsaved edits prompts too — the new file is not opened until you save, discard or cancel.
• Line endings. Saving a file that used CRLF rewrites it with LF. If you need CRLF preserved, edit that file in an external editor instead.
• Save file as… asks for a full destination path and continues editing that new path.

Reload and auto-reload

• Reload keeps your place. Reload from disk and Revert / reload from disk preserve the scroll position and cursor location instead of jumping back to the top.
• Auto-reload is an opt-in toggle per open file: the viewer watches the file and reloads whenever it changes, still preserving scroll position. It is session-only — every newly opened file starts with it off.
• Tail mode is the log-following variant: each reload jumps to the end of the file, like tail -f. You can switch between plain auto-reload and tail mode without turning auto-reload off first.
• Unsaved edits are never overwritten. If the file changes on disk while you have unsaved changes, the reload is skipped and the status bar shows File changed on disk (not reloaded).

Zoom

The viewer has its own font-size zoom, independent of the file panes' zoom.

• Whatever keys Increase font size / Decrease font size are bound to (Alt+Up / Alt+Down by default) also zoom the viewer's text — there is no separate binding to learn, and it works in edit mode without interfering with typing.
• The same two actions plus a palette-only Reset font size are in the viewer's palette, each showing its current shortcut.
• The chosen size is remembered separately from the pane zoom and survives a restart, until you reset it.

Rebinding increase_pane_font_size / decrease_pane_font_size changes what the viewer listens for too — it looks up the current binding rather than assuming Alt+Up / Alt+Down.

Bindable commands

The palette actions are viewer-only commands you bind in your own Viewer Key Bindings (<OS>).json — a separate file from the normal key bindings. A rebind always beats the default key.

Command	Default key	Mode	Action
text_edit	none (palette only)	view	Edit file
text_reload	none (palette only)	view	Reload from disk
text_toggle_auto_reload	none (palette only)	view	Enable/disable auto-reload
text_toggle_tail	none (palette only)	view	Enable/disable tail mode
text_save	none (palette only)	edit	Save file
text_save_as	none (palette only)	edit	Save file as…
text_revert	none (palette only)	edit	Revert / reload from disk
viewer_close	Escape/Enter/Backspace	both	Close viewer
viewer_switch_panes	Tab	view only	Switch panes
viewer_open_palette	Ctrl+Shift+P	both	Open viewer command palette
viewer_next_file / viewer_previous_file	none (palette only)	view	View next / previous file
viewer_toggle_same_type_advance	none (palette only)	view	Toggle "advance only for same type"

Behaviour

• Read-only by default. You can always navigate and select text — for copying, say — but the buffer only becomes writable after Edit file.
• Word-wrapped at the pane's width, no horizontal scrolling.
• Size-capped. At most 2 MB of a file is read; anything larger is truncated with a trailing notice, so a huge file cannot freeze the UI.
• Encoding-safe. Content is decoded as UTF-8 with invalid bytes replaced by a placeholder character, rather than guessing an encoding or refusing the file.
• Plain text only. A .md file is shown as raw text, not rendered.
• Follows the active theme.