A blazing-fast directory tree viewer for terminals—minimalist, interactive, and packed with smart features!

• Speed: Built for performance, rendering large directory trees in milliseconds.
• Interactivity: Navigate your filesystem with intuitive keyboard shortcuts.
• Customization: Tailor the appearance and behavior to suit your workflow.

cargo install fstree

fstree [OPTIONS] [PATH]

Note that PATH defaults to the current directory (.) if not specified.

Launch the TUI with fstree interactive [OPTIONS] [PATH].

1. List the contents of the current directory

fstree

2. Explore a project interactively, ignoring gitignored files

fstree interactive -g --icons

3. Display a directory with file sizes and permissions (classic view)

fstree -sp

4. See the git status of all files in a project

fstree -aG

5. Get a tree with clickable file links (in a supported terminal)

fstree --hyperlinks

6. Start an interactive session with all data displayed

fstree interactive -gG --icons -s -p

7. Sort files naturally with directories first

fstree --dirs-first --natural-sort

8. Sort by file size in descending order

fstree --sort size --reverse

9. Sort by extension with case-sensitive ordering

fstree --sort extension --case-sensitive

10. Sort with dotfiles first and directories first

fstree --dotfiles-first --dirs-first -a

The classic view mode is designed to work well with other command-line tools via pipes (|).

This is a powerful way to instantly find any file in a large project.

fstree -a -g --icons | fzf

fzf will take the tree from fstree and provide an interactive search prompt to filter it.

If a directory is too large to fit on one screen, pipe the output to a pager.

# Using less (the -R flag preserves color)
fstree -L 10 | less -R

# Using bat (a modern pager that understands colors)
fstree --icons | bat

You can use fstree as a visual cd command. Add the following function to your shell's startup file (e.g., ~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc):

# A function to visually change directories with fstree
lcd() {
    # Run fstree and capture the selected path into a variable.
    # The TUI will draw on stderr, and the final path will be on stdout.
    local selected_dir
    selected_dir="$(fstree interactive -g --icons)"

    # If the user selected a path (and didn't just quit), `cd` into it.
    # Check if the selection is a directory.
    if [[ -n "$selected_dir" && -d "$selected_dir" ]]; then
        cd "$selected_dir"
    fi
}

After adding this and starting a new shell session (or running source ~/.bashrc), you can simply run:

lcd

This will launch the fstree interactive UI. Navigate to the directory you want, press Ctrl+s, and your shell's current directory will instantly change.

fstree respects your terminal's color theme by default. It reads the LS_COLORS environment variable to colorize files and directories according to your system's configuration. This is the same variable used by GNU ls and other modern command-line tools.

On most Linux distributions, this variable is already set. You can customize it by modifying your shell's startup file.

macOS does not set the LS_COLORS variable by default. To enable this feature, you can install coreutils:

brew install coreutils

Then, add the following line to your shell's startup file (e.g., ~/.zshrc or ~/.bash_profile):

# Use gdircolors from the newly installed coreutils
eval "$(gdircolors)"

Windows does not use the LS_COLORS variable natively, but you can set it manually to enable color support in modern terminals like Windows Terminal.

First, copy a standard LS_COLORS string, such as this one: rs=0:di=01;34:ln=01;36:ex=01;32:*.zip=01;31:*.png=01;35:. This string defines colors for various file types:

• Directories: Displayed in bold blue.
• Executable files: Displayed in bold green (e.g., .sh scripts).
• Symbolic links: Displayed in bold cyan.
• Archives: Displayed in bold red (e.g., .zip, .tar.gz).
• Image files: Displayed in bold magenta (e.g., .png, .jpg).
• Other files: Displayed in the terminal's default text color.

To set it for your current PowerShell session, run:

$env:LS_COLORS="rs=0:di=01;34:ln=01;36:ex=01;32:*.zip=01;31:*.png=01;35:"

To set it for your current Command Prompt (cmd) session, run:

set LS_COLORS=rs=0:di=01;34:ln=01;36:ex=01;32:*.zip=01;31:*.png=01;35:

To make the setting permanent, you can add the command to your PowerShell profile or set it in the system's "Environment Variables" dialog.

After setting the variable and starting a new shell session, fstree will automatically display your configured colors.

The philosophy and functionality of fstree are heavily inspired by the excellent C-based tree command line program. This project is an attempt to recreate that classic utility in modern, safe Rust.

• tree

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