Vifm

What users are saying...

“Just wanted to say thanks for all your work on Vifm. It's such an integral part of my workflow and is by far the best terminal file manager around.”
— Declan Chidlow

“To all who have contributed to this great program, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. This may be the best program that has ever been installed on my computer. Vifm makes my time on the computer so much more efficient and enjoyable that I cannot begin to tell you how much I appreciate your efforts. Thank you so much for creating and continuing to work on this great product.”
— John Shea

“Thank you for this great Vifm tool whose slogan could be: "If you don't know how to do it, don't look at the docs, just think how you would do it in vi."”
— Carlos Pita

“Thanks so much for maintaining Vifm. I use it every hour I'm awake.”
— Roger Bongers

“There aren't many programs which stay useful and ergonomic for so many releases. I use vifm a lot. And it is the main tool for me while navigating fs. It's so configurable that it feels like a glove on a hand or even like skin. Keep it going!”
— Aetet

Features...

• Vim-like user mappings
• Vim-like command-line mode with ranges and abbreviations
• Vim-like marks and registers
• directory tree comparison
• operation undoing/redoing/backgrounding
• FUSE file systems support
• sessions
• color schemes, which can also be applied to specific sub-trees
• file decorations customizable according to their type and/or name
• named bookmarks (tags)
• less-like preview mode with customizable viewers
• advanced file filtering and renaming capabilities
• one or two pane view within tabs
• shell-like and external command-line editing
• table/grid/tree/miller views of files
• built-in integration with GNU Screen and tmux
• multi-block selection
• remembering position in previously visited directories
• remote command execution
• ability to script configuration for specific directories
• trash
• cross-platform (GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris, Windows, Mac OS) and UTF-8 aware

Reporting bugs, requesting features, asking questions...

If it's a general usage question please use the dedicated Q&A site (registration is not required). This way the information will be publicly searchable and available for a wider range of users.

Otherwise, pick the method of communication most convenient to you (e.g., where you already have an account if it's required):

• GitHub issues
• SourceForge tracker
• E-mails to xaizek@posteo.net (please include "vifm" somewhere in the title)

Donations...

GitHub Sponsors (monthly or one time)

Bitcoin (bc1qe3a9wlkvnlupu7chwgft8e2e75xwd7ny2pygzt)

Latest news

Vifm v0.14.4

31 May 2026

Thanks for the bug reports. This is another (likely the last one) bugfix release for the v0.14.x series. The changes included in this release expand or correct documentation, update text of messages, adjust sample vifmrc files or fix bugs.

Invocation

• Reworked --help output to be more compact and readable.

Documentation

• Added menu index to the documentation. Patch by CaptainFantastic.
• Improved description of the local filter in the documentation. Thanks to CaptainFantastic.
• Documented quoting and escaping on command-line. Patch by Kirill Rekhov.
• Documented name conflict resolution dialog. Patch by Kirill Rekhov.
• Rewrote documentation about command-line ranges to make it complete and more readable. Thanks to CaptainFantastic.
• Improved wording in documentation describing general behaviour of visual mode.

Menus and dialogs

• Improved potentially confusing wording in the dialog confirming exit while background jobs are running.
• Don't offer "append the tail" conflict resolution option for al and rl operations because it's inappropriate for creation of symbolic links.

File preview

• Display an error on trying to switch from external preview to raw mode.

Integration

• Fall back to using standard::fast-content-type from GLib if standard::content-type is missing. Patch by Jan Palus (a.k.a. jpalus).

Other changes

• Added example of handling .deb-files to sample vifmrc. Patch by Kirill Rekhov.
• Updated sample vifmrc files to use vi as a last resort if it exists.
• Updated list of categories in .desktop-file. Patch by Jared Cervantes (a.k.a. Jaredy899).

Fixes

• Fixed :normal not being able to run commands which end with whitespace.
• Fixed printing newline on cancelling choosing a directory via --choose-dir option. Thanks to The Cyberduck.
• Fixed escaping characters with codes greater than 127 producing garbage.
• Fixed vifm-media-osx script for modern versions of OS X. Thanks to vulpes-vulpeos.
• Fixed weird delays in FUSE when running an AppImage caused by a trailing colon in $LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Thanks to qadzek.
• Fixed a small memory leak on trying to display a map menu which doesn't show up because it would be empty.
• Fixed vifm-pause and other helpers not being available from within AppImage. Thanks to Marcin Kowalski (a.k.a. mrkowalski).
• Fixed vifm.vim not cleaning up buffers properly when used as a netrw replacement. Thanks to Ivan Shapovalov (a.k.a. intelfx) and pascualpobil.
• Fixed a crash if GLib didn't return a file type. Patch by Jan Palus (a.k.a. jpalus).
• Fixed undoing of chmod operation not restoring owner's read permission. Thanks to aleksejrs. Patch by Kirill Rekhov.
• Fixed incorrect progress indicator for dp and do keys in compare view. Thanks to aleksejrs.
• Fixed UID/GID occasionally not being formatted as requested (numeric vs. symbolic form) in the UI. Thanks to vuenn.
• Fixed rl normal mode key sometimes not moving cursor to the newly inserted link and simultaneously logging partial name in the undo history message, which is merely informative.
• Fixed :open not entering symbolic links to directories if there is no vifm executable in $PATH. Thanks to CaptainFantastic.
• Fixed :yank and :delete not handling optional count parameter correctly (a regression since v0.11-beta). Thanks to CaptainFantastic.
• Fixed completion of :highlight truncating long custom column names.
• Fixed a Lua column disabling search highlighting for all columns to its right.
• Fixed a buffer overflow in trie implementation (CVE-2026-8997). Thanks to Michał Majchrowicz and Marcin Wyczechowski.
• Fixed Lua modules written in C not being loaded on Unix-like systems. Thanks to Steven Xu (a.k.a. stevenxxiu).