Soquel

A keyboard-first file manager for macOS.

Native AppKit. No Electron, no account, no network, no telemetry. It opens a folder and gets out of the way.

Apple silicon and Intel · macOS 13 or later · MIT licensed

Icon view, with real Quick Look thumbnails

Views everything it does, in full

List view ⌥⌘1: Sortable columns: name, size, kind, date, with a folders-first toggle.
Icon view ⌥⌘2: Adjustable tile size.
Column view ⌥⌘3: A pane per level, folders marked with a chevron.
View-mode pill: The three modes draw as one segmented control with the selected segment filled.
Thumbnails in icon view: Generated by Quick Look off the main thread, cached by path, size and modification date.
Sort by name, size, kind or date ⌃⌘1–⌃⌘4: Or click a column header, or use the palette.
Multi-column sorting: Shift-click a header to add a tiebreaker, up to four keys.
Auto-sized columns ⌥⌘=: Widths fit the longest value in the folder, measured over every row.
Metadata columns: Dimensions, resolution, duration, codec, bit rate, colour space, camera — in any folder.
Preview and details panel ⌥⌘I: Quick Look over kind, size, dates, POSIX permissions, owner, symlink target, extended attributes, media metadata, and SHA-256 on demand.
Quick Look Space: The system preview, as everywhere else.

Nested pane splits ⌘D ⇧⌘D: Vertical and horizontal mix. A split divides the focused pane only, so splitting one leaves the rest alone. ⌥⌘D rotates the split holding it.
Up to four panes, tabs in each: ⌘1–⌘4 to focus, ⌘T for a tab.
Session restore: Panes, tabs, and the active tab in each, brought back on launch.
Named workspaces: Save and reopen an arrangement. A nested layout reopens nested; a pane whose folder has gone leaves a gap the arrangement closes.
Pane toolbar: Filter field on top, a customisable button bar under it. Right-click to choose the buttons.

Create, rename, duplicate, copy, move, trash, delete: Per-file error reporting. A failure in the middle never silently abandons the rest.
Rename in every view: List edits the name in place; icon and column use a sheet.
Conflict handling: Keep both, replace, skip, cancel — with both sizes and dates shown.
Folder merge on conflict: Merge, apply-to-all, skip-identical. A merge is deliberately not undoable.
Undo ⌘Z: Rename, create, duplicate, trash and move.
Transfer queue ⌥⌘J: Throughput, a coarse estimate, and pause, resume and cancel per job.
Selection shelf ⌃⌘A ⌃⌘B: Gather files from any number of folders, then deliver them all at once.
Batch rename: Find and replace, regex, numbering, case, extension, trim and file-date insertion, with a live preview.
Cut and paste in the context menu: Plus Copy Path directly, with the other formats one level down.
Drag and drop: Within Soquel and to and from every other application.
New File templates: Text, Markdown, JSON, Swift, Python, Shell, HTML and CSV, created where you are standing.
Folder comparison and sync ⇧⌘K: Left only, right only, differs, same — by size and date, or by checksum. Copies one direction over the rows you tick.

Search panel ⌘F: Name or contents; contains, regex or glob; this folder, home, or everywhere; case, hidden files, app bundles, depth.
Search says what it skipped: Too large, not text, unreadable folder, result cap. "Nothing found" is never confused with "did not look".
Search ranking: Name matches outrank content matches; an exact name outranks a prefix, which outranks a substring.
.gitignore-aware search: Optional. Nested ignore files, negation and anchoring all honoured, and the count skipped is reported.
Saved searches: Named queries in the sidebar. Every option survives, and a search whose folder is gone runs in the current one.
In-folder filter /: Narrow the folder you are looking at without leaving it.
Command palette ⌘K: Fuzzy match over every command in the application.

Breadcrumbs and an editable path bar: Click to type or paste a path. Quotes and newlines are stripped.
History, enclosing folder, Git root: Back and forward, ⌘↑, and a jump to the repository root.
Folder tree ⇧⌘T: An expandable hierarchy in the sidebar, lazy-loaded, following the active pane.
Sidebar groups: Your own named sections: create, rename, remove, collapse.
Pin to the sidebar: Drag a folder in, and reorder by dragging within and between groups.
Custom sidebar icons: Any emoji or SF Symbol per shortcut, plus a display name that does not rename the folder.
Keyboard-first preset: j k to move, h l to leave and enter, g g and G for the ends, ⌃d ⌃u by half a screen. Handled in the file list, so text fields are untouched.
Remappable shortcuts: Every command, recorded in place, with conflict detection.

Disk map ⇧⌘U: A sunburst of where the space went, with the biggest items beside it. Hard-linked inodes counted once, symlinks not followed, and slices too thin to draw summed rather than dropped.
Folder sizes: An opt-in background column. Counts a hard-linked inode once and never follows a symlink.
Git status: A status column and badges from git status, with folders marked when anything inside them has changed.
Archive browsing: Look inside zip, tar, 7z and rar without unpacking. Extract on demand.
Copy path, six formats: Absolute, file URL, filename, filename without extension, parent directory, shell-escaped.
Hidden files ⇧⌘.: Shown or not, your choice, per window.

Connect to Server ⌃⌘K: SMB, AFP, NFS, WebDAV and read-only FTP, through the system's own mounter. A mounted server is an ordinary path, so search, compare and the shelf all work on it unchanged. No password passes through Soquel.
Terminal and editor ⌃⌘T ⌃⌘E: Opens the current folder in either. Installed terminals and editors are detected, and your choice is remembered.
Open With, and set the default: Every application registered for the file, plus changing the system-wide handler for its type.
Choose what opens each kind of file: Twenty-three kinds in one table in Settings, rather than one file at a time through Get Info.
A prompt before slow applications: Xcode, Android Studio, the JetBrains and Adobe applications and the rest ask before opening, with an "Open, don't ask again" for the ones you meant.

Settings as one JSON file: settings.json beside theme.json. Edit it in any editor and the running application picks the change up — no restart.
Customisable colours: Seven slots, for light and dark separately.
Background image: Any image behind the file list, with opacity and five fit modes.
Designed light and dark palettes: Both drawn deliberately, with monospaced figures so columns of numbers line up.
Settings window ⌘,: Appearance, Keyboard and Applications.

Logging: Every notable action, to ~/Library/Logs/Soquel/ and to the unified log.
Copy Recent Logs: In the palette. Puts the last three minutes on the clipboard, with the build and OS named. Files older than a day are removed on their own.