Documentation

guide

Quickstart

Get up and running with croot in under 5 minutes.

Install

The fastest way to install on macOS:

brew install realzhangshen/croot/croot

See the Installation guide for other platforms and methods.

Launch

croot            # Browse current directory
croot ~/projects # Browse a specific directory

croot opens a full-screen TUI file explorer in your terminal.

Basic Navigation

KeyAction
Up / DownMove cursor
Left / RightCollapse / expand directory
EnterToggle directory or open file
Home / EndJump to top / bottom
/Fuzzy search by filename
EscCancel search or close popup
Ctrl+CQuit

Open a Preview

Press p to toggle the split-pane preview. It shows syntax-highlighted source code, rendered Markdown, or hex dumps for binary files.

Navigate the tree while the preview updates automatically.

File Operations

KeyAction
aCreate new file
ACreate new directory
RRename
DDelete
eOpen in editor

Git Status

If you're in a git repository, croot shows file statuses:

  • Green — staged or added
  • Yellow — modified
  • Red — deleted
  • Gray — ignored

Status propagates to parent directories so you can see at a glance where changes live.

Configuration

croot works out of the box with zero configuration. To customize behavior:

croot config        # Show current config values
croot config --edit # Open config in your editor
croot config --init # Create default config file

Config file location: ~/.config/croot/config.toml

See the Configuration guide for all options.

Next Steps