flitz

A fast, keyboard-friendly file manager written in Python.
Fast Location / Indexing / Traversal Zone

Features

• Clean Qt interface with a sidebar for bookmarks and file systems, file type icons, and human-readable sizes.
• Sortable columns — click a column header to sort by name, size, type, or modification date.
• Keyboard first — search, rename, create, delete, copy and paste without touching the mouse. All shortcuts can be changed.
• Recursive search within the current folder.
• Customizable colors, fonts, context menu, and key bindings via a simple YAML file.
• Remote file systems such as FTP, next to your local disk.
• Extensible — add context menu entries and file systems with plugins.

Installation

flitz requires Python 3.10 or newer and runs on Linux and macOS.

pipx install flitz

Alternatively, use uv tool install flitz or pip install flitz.

Usage

flitz                 # open the current folder
flitz ~/Documents     # open a specific folder
flitz --list-fonts    # fonts which can be used in the configuration
flitz --version

Keyboard shortcuts

Configuration

flitz reads ~/.flitz.yml. Press Ctrl+M to create and open it. Every setting is optional:

font: Ubuntu
font_size: 11
background_color: "#ffffff"
text_color: "#1f2328"
selection:
  background_color: "#16778f"
  text_color: "#ffffff"
show_hidden_files: false
keybindings:
  search: <Control-f>
  rename_item: <F2>
file_systems:
  - name: rebex
    type: FTP
    hostname: test.rebex.net

See the documentation for all options, including sharing themes with external_config.

Plugins

Other packages can extend flitz via entry points:

• flitz — a flitz.context_menu.ContextMenuItem for the context menu
• flitz.file_systems — a flitz.file_systems.FileSystem subclass

[project.entry-points.flitz]
compress = "my_plugin:compress_menu_item"

Development

flitz uses uv to manage its dependencies:

git clone https://github.com/MartinThoma/flitz.git
cd flitz
uv sync               # create .venv with all development dependencies
uv run flitz          # start flitz
make test             # run the tests
make lint             # ruff + mypy
pre-commit install    # run the checks before every commit

Releasing

1. Update flitz/_version.py and CHANGELOG.md in a REL: x.y.z commit.
2. Create a tag with the release notes as tag message body: git tag -s x.y.z
3. Push the tag: git push origin x.y.z

The release workflow publishes the package to PyPI and creates a GitHub release.

License

flitz is licensed under the MIT License.