Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Xplr – A hackable, minimal, fast TUI file explorer
A hackable, minimal, fast TUI file explorer. Contribute to sayanarijit/xplr development by creating an account on GitHub.
Xplr is a terminal-based file explorer designed for speed and customization. It offers a minimal interface with hackable architecture, allowing users to modify and extend its functionality. Built for developers and… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier. Xplr – A hackable, minimal, fast TUI file explorer launched in 2021; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1
Hi HN! I wrote a small program to browse folders in the terminal. The main inspiration was type-ahead search in GUI file managers. There exist several programs that are similar (see the listing in the README), but none of them do it quite the way I like, and often they have a very complex UI and a ton of features. I tried to make something that is obvious how to use and gets out of your way. (I also wanted an excuse to learn Rust.) Let me know what you think!
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 2
Hey HN, I built this over the last year as I always wanted to have an easy file and terminal access to all of my servers, including containers and clusters that you normally can't connect to with existing solutions out of the box. At first glance it might not look very novel, but if you dig a little deeper, you will see that the entire foundation of how it communicates with remote systems is completely different from any other solution out there. What happens in the background can essentially be explained this way: It launches a local shell process like cmd, sh, etc. and in it executes a…
2024 · xpipe.io · its alternatives →
- 3
The top-like text-based user interface for Austin. Contribute to P403n1x87/austin-tui development by creating an account on GitHub.
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 4AP
After having cycled through various CLI-based todo apps, I started to realise that I actually don’t need a tool at all for managing my todos. Most of the time, my use cases are quite simple, like viewing my todo items, checking them off, or adding a new one. Rather than having to memorise CLI commands for these interactions (which I’m not super good at), I figured that it’s easier for me to use my text editor directly, and have an editor plugin help me with the visual structure and some convenience functionality. So, kind-of similar to Emacs Org Mode, but without having to use Emacs. I…
2022 · its alternatives →
- 5
Last month, I started learning a Python TUI framework called Textual. After working on a 4x4 board game, I made an interactive app to test your CLI text processing skills with 40 beginner to intermediate level exercises. The app is fairly basic in terms of features — only single input file, so no stdin data, multiple files, etc. Most of the exercises in this app is based on my Computing from the Command Line ebook (https://learnbyexample.github.io/cli-computing/preface.html). I hope to improve the TUI app to support all the 200+ exercises sometime next year.
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 6CT
A terminal-based web browser in Nim.[1] Has acceptable (YMMV) CSS rendering, some JS support, and inline images (sixel/kitty). It can also use various protocols other than http(s) such as (s)ftp, gopher, gemini, ... Chawan started out as a w3m clone, and the UI still resembles it. However, the architecture has turned out quite different, with pages loaded in separate processes, and protocol/file type handling separated out into external binaries. An interesting result is that you can even register decoders for custom inline image formats, although practical use cases of this are…
2025 · chawan.net · its alternatives →
- 7FA
I built Fresh to challenge the status quo that terminal editing must require a steep learning curve or endless configuration. My goal was to create a fast, resource-efficient TUI editor with the usability and features of a modern GUI editor (like a command palette, mouse support, and LSP integration). Core Philosophy: - Ease-of-Use: Fundamentally non-modal. Prioritizes standard keybindings and a minimal learning curve. - Efficiency: Uses a lazy-loading piece tree to avoid loading huge files into RAM - reads only what's needed for user interactions. Coded in Rust. - Extensibility: Uses…
Dec 2025 · sinelaw.github.io · its alternatives →
- 8
A Terminal UI to browse Hacker News. Contribute to aome510/hackernews-TUI development by creating an account on GitHub.
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 9
Hello HN community, I'm excited to share a new command-line tool I developed called purl, inspired by the simplicity of Perl one-liners for efficient text processing. Purl features include Perl-like regex that simplifies text manipulation, it's cross-platform so works equally well on macOS, Linux, etc., and it's quick and easy to install. The tool also supports simple commands such as -replace, -filter, and -exclude, and offers optional color output to enhance readability. Purl is a practical alternative to traditional tools like sed and grep, designed to address some of their common…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 10
Hi HN, This is a TUI app which displays interactive Markdown documents. Interactive in the sense that you can scroll code fences / tables / and click links. There's a Table of Contents extracted from the MD, and a very rudimentary browser like forward + back. I'm thinking it could be the starting point for a variety of hypertext like applications in the terminal. Very much a work in progress.
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 11
A TUI text reader for the terminal. Contribute to octobanana/fltrdr development by creating an account on GitHub.
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 12
Author here. I made this little TUI program for managing default applications on the Linux desktop. Maybe some of you will find it useful. Happy to answer any questions.
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 13
I built a Rust-based CLI/terminal UI for inspecting Parquet files—data, metadata, and row-group-level structure—right from the terminal. If someone sent me a Parquet file, I used to open DuckDB or Polars just to see what was inside. Now I can do it with one command. Repo: https://github.com/kaushiksrini/parqeye
Nov 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 14
Hey HN, I built XPipe as I always wanted to have an easy file system and terminal access to all of my remote systems, including containers, virtual machines, clusters, and more that you normally can't connect to with existing solutions out of the box. XPipe is a new type of connection hub that allows you to access your entire server infrastructure from your local desktop. It can make your life easier when working with any kind of servers by eliminating all the commonly tedious tasks that come up when interacting with remote systems, either from the terminal or from a graphical interface.…
2025 · xpipe.io · its alternatives →
- 15
My Downloads folder had been left unkept for a really long time and cleaning it up using Finder was quite cumbersome. So I started creating a simple app to help me filter out and delete or move the files in the folder. It started out very basic and the filtering options genuinely helped me clean out the Downloads folder, then as I thought of more features I would like to see in a file manager I started to add them. Some of the features are: - Fuzzy go to folder/file where you only need to write a few letters of a full path, get suggestions and can jump to the correct path instantly -…
Jul 2026 · whimfiles.com · its alternatives →
- 16
I originally was just messing with pi-autoresearch. Gave it a sample task to build the most portable coding agent. First cut was 6 KB of shell. Great for one-shots, unusable interactively. I was shocked it actually worked. Started building up -- adding features — but with a self-imposed rule: no new dependencies, and sub 500 LOC. This thing had to be truly portable. Just sh, curl, awk. System primitives only. Which means I did some genuinely disgusting things in awk, including JSON parsing and the OpenAI Responses tool loop with reasoning items carried across turns. It's now ~400 lines. In…
Apr 2026 · pu.dev · its alternatives →
- 17
Hi HN, I built a simple TUI for viewing and editing .md files in the terminal. More and more markdown files keep appearing in our projects, and I found myself needing a quick way to view(with syntax highlighting) and edit them without leaving the terminal, so I built this
Apr 2026 · mdee.bkh.dev · its alternatives →
- 18
Command-line XML and HTML beautifier and content extractor - sibprogrammer/xq
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 19
Hi HN! I wanted to share Yakari, a tool I built to make command-line interfaces more approachable through interactive TUIs. If you've ever forgotten CLI flags or needed to look up command syntax, this might help. Yakari turns complex commands into interactive menus. Users can navigate through options with simple key presses instead of memorizing complex command structures. If you've used Emacs and Magit (or any other Transient) before, the interface will feel familiar. Features: - Transform CLIs into guided menus - Create custom menus for any CLI - Support for flags, named parameters,…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 20
GUI disk analyzers are great for figuring out what's filling up your laptop/desktop drive. On containers or remote servers, the options are limited to purely text based utilities (e.g. du) or list-centric TUIs (e.g. ncdu) which are usually limited to viewing one directory at a time. I created leaves to fill that gap. Inspired by classic utilities like WinDirStat and KDirStat, it uses a 2-dimensional treemap^1 visualization to show the entire directory hierarchy with proportionally sized rectangles. It's performant enough to handle millions of files, thanks to Rust and multi-threading.…
Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 21
- 22
Hi HN, I built this because I got tired of the Claude Code CLI hiding details from me. Recent updates have replaced critical output with summaries like "Read 3 files" or "Edited 2 files". To see what actually happened, I was forced to use `--verbose`, which floods the terminal with unreadable JSON and system prompts. I wanted a middle ground: *Full observability without the noise.* `claude-devtools` is a local Electron app that tails the session logs in `~/.claude/` to reconstruct the execution trace in real-time. *Unlike wrappers, it solves the visibility gap in your native…
Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 23AC
2012 · zachwill.github.com · its alternatives →
- 24
hey hn! I (re)built this TUI tool for browsing BBC News in the terminal, it uses an RSS feed for getting headlines and previews and you can read articles too. Try it out and let me know what you think! :)
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
Also compare
- tere – A Faster Alternative to cd+ls alternatives
- XPipe, a brand-new type of remote file browser and shell connection hub alternatives
- Austin-Tui – Spy inside a running Python program at no performance cost alternatives
- A plain-text file format for todos and check lists alternatives
- Interactive exercises for Linux CLI text processing commands alternatives
- Chawan TUI web browser alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →