{"slug": "yazi", "name": "yazi", "category": "files", "category_name": "Files, sync and backup", "description": "Fast, asynchronous terminal (TUI) file manager written in Rust.", "recommenders": 9, "commenters": 10, "warners": 0, "score": 8.272, "rising": 1.04, "first": "2025-11-03", "latest": "2026-09-23", "why": "Liked as a fast, responsive terminal file manager, often paired with Zellij, tmux and Neovim in a terminal setup.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 9, "neutral": 1, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [2, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 2, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": ["Terminal toolkit fit", "File browsing"], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "Take a look at yazi https://yazi-rs.github.io/, I find it pretty good for looking at my files.", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/sxyazi/yazi", "official_url": "https://yazi-rs.github.io/", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["yazi", "Yazi"], "verdict": [{"text": "Liked as a fast, responsive terminal file manager", "cites": [{"id": 792860626, "item_id": 49553789, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49553789", "by": "bspeelm", "date": "2026-09-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "landed on Zellij and Yazi, made a dev console alias, and was off. Faster, lighter, less distracting.", "excerpt": "I was tired of IDEs shipping with AI bloatware and telemetry. 1 GB for a \"lightweight\" IDE is fairly laughable. And all of that would be fine if I used any of it. I didn't. What I actually used came down to three things: a file browser, a console for my code assist, and a console for CLI commands. (I admit a debugger occasionally but less so these days.) So I went looking at what the terminal could do in 2026 and lan", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal file browser", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bothy \u2013 a one-command terminal workspace from tools you trust"}, {"id": 736483857, "item_id": 46030241, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46030241", "by": "jauntywundrkind", "date": "2025-11-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I really appreciate modern heavily async software like the Yazi file manager.", "excerpt": "Rtorrent is pretty fine. But for as long as I used it, the UI would hang on me for sometimes multiple seconds. I really appreciate modern heavily async software like the Yazi file manager. Maintaining user responsiveness feels so nice. https://github.com/sxyazi/yazi", "context": "", "use_case": "file manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "A ncurses-based command line torrent client for high performance"}, {"id": 781953696, "item_id": 48872106, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48872106", "by": "xarwex", "date": "2026-07-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Take a look at yazi https://yazi-rs.github.io/, I find it pretty good for looking at my files.", "excerpt": "Take a look at yazi https://yazi-rs.github.io/, I find it pretty good for looking at my files.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal file browsing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Good Tools Are Invisible"}]}, {"text": ", often paired with Zellij, tmux and Neovim in a terminal setup.", "cites": [{"id": 792860626, "item_id": 49553789, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49553789", "by": "bspeelm", "date": "2026-09-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "landed on Zellij and Yazi, made a dev console alias, and was off. Faster, lighter, less distracting.", "excerpt": "I was tired of IDEs shipping with AI bloatware and telemetry. 1 GB for a \"lightweight\" IDE is fairly laughable. And all of that would be fine if I used any of it. I didn't. What I actually used came down to three things: a file browser, a console for my code assist, and a console for CLI commands. (I admit a debugger occasionally but less so these days.) So I went looking at what the terminal could do in 2026 and lan", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal file browser", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bothy \u2013 a one-command terminal workspace from tools you trust"}, {"id": 790415968, "item_id": 49400998, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49400998", "by": "folkrav", "date": "2026-08-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "yazi as a file explorer", "excerpt": "Not OP but, I regularly use : - yazi as a file explorer - lazygit for git - tmux/zellij as multiplexers - fzf left and right for a bunch of utils (terminal history, switching between projects in zellij/tmux when working in multi-project workspaces, etc) - neovim as a text editor - glow for markdown reading - currently on pi for my home harness, CC at work I'm probably missing a few but those are the ones I use more o", "context": "", "use_case": "file explorer", "switched_from": "", "story": "Stop Making TUIs"}, {"id": 744098257, "item_id": 46506141, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46506141", "by": "submeta", "date": "2026-01-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "NeoVim, Yazi, and Tmux are my go-to tools.", "excerpt": "NeoVim, Yazi, and Tmux are my go-to tools. When I need AI and Agents, I create multiple instances of Claude Code or Codex. However, I don\u2019t let them interfere with my workflow if I don\u2019t need them.", "context": "", "use_case": "file management", "switched_from": "", "story": "I switched from VSCode to Zed"}, {"id": 790204257, "item_id": 49387766, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49387766", "by": "Alien1Being", "date": "2026-08-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "particularly when combined with TUI applications like yazi, lsd, fzf , neovim etc", "excerpt": "Linux is so very predictably stable from a desktop user perspective . It is an absolute pleasure to use , particularly when combined with TUI applications like yazi, lsd, fzf , neovim etc Been using it since the early nineties . At work I use Windows Server 2025 as my desktop ( the alternative would be the dreadful AI infested Windows 11). While Windows Server 2025 is not dreadful , the Linux experience is so much ni", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Linux 7.2 Released"}]}, {"text": " No complaints appear in these mentions; it suits developers who prefer a terminal-first workflow over an IDE.", "cites": [{"id": 792860626, "item_id": 49553789, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49553789", "by": "bspeelm", "date": "2026-09-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "landed on Zellij and Yazi, made a dev console alias, and was off. Faster, lighter, less distracting.", "excerpt": "I was tired of IDEs shipping with AI bloatware and telemetry. 1 GB for a \"lightweight\" IDE is fairly laughable. And all of that would be fine if I used any of it. I didn't. What I actually used came down to three things: a file browser, a console for my code assist, and a console for CLI commands. (I admit a debugger occasionally but less so these days.) So I went looking at what the terminal could do in 2026 and lan", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal file browser", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bothy \u2013 a one-command terminal workspace from tools you trust"}, {"id": 744098257, "item_id": 46506141, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46506141", "by": "submeta", "date": "2026-01-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "NeoVim, Yazi, and Tmux are my go-to tools.", "excerpt": "NeoVim, Yazi, and Tmux are my go-to tools. When I need AI and Agents, I create multiple instances of Claude Code or Codex. However, I don\u2019t let them interfere with my workflow if I don\u2019t need them.", "context": "", "use_case": "file management", "switched_from": "", "story": "I switched from VSCode to Zed"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Terminal toolkit fit", "summary": "Commenters use it daily alongside Zellij, tmux, Neovim, fzf and lazygit.", "quotes": [{"id": 790415968, "item_id": 49400998, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49400998", "by": "folkrav", "date": "2026-08-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "yazi as a file explorer", "excerpt": "Not OP but, I regularly use : - yazi as a file explorer - lazygit for git - tmux/zellij as multiplexers - fzf left and right for a bunch of utils (terminal history, switching between projects in zellij/tmux when working in multi-project workspaces, etc) - neovim as a text editor - glow for markdown reading - currently on pi for my home harness, CC at work I'm probably missing a few but those are the ones I use more o", "context": "", "use_case": "file explorer", "switched_from": "", "story": "Stop Making TUIs"}, {"id": 744098257, "item_id": 46506141, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46506141", "by": "submeta", "date": "2026-01-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "NeoVim, Yazi, and Tmux are my go-to tools.", "excerpt": "NeoVim, Yazi, and Tmux are my go-to tools. When I need AI and Agents, I create multiple instances of Claude Code or Codex. However, I don\u2019t let them interfere with my workflow if I don\u2019t need them.", "context": "", "use_case": "file management", "switched_from": "", "story": "I switched from VSCode to Zed"}, {"id": 790204257, "item_id": 49387766, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49387766", "by": "Alien1Being", "date": "2026-08-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "particularly when combined with TUI applications like yazi, lsd, fzf , neovim etc", "excerpt": "Linux is so very predictably stable from a desktop user perspective . It is an absolute pleasure to use , particularly when combined with TUI applications like yazi, lsd, fzf , neovim etc Been using it since the early nineties . At work I use Windows Server 2025 as my desktop ( the alternative would be the dreadful AI infested Windows 11). While Windows Server 2025 is not dreadful , the Linux experience is so much ni", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Linux 7.2 Released"}]}, {"label": "File browsing", "summary": "Used as a file explorer and visual file picker.", "quotes": [{"id": 781953696, "item_id": 48872106, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48872106", "by": "xarwex", "date": "2026-07-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Take a look at yazi https://yazi-rs.github.io/, I find it pretty good for looking at my files.", "excerpt": "Take a look at yazi https://yazi-rs.github.io/, I find it pretty good for looking at my files.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal file browsing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Good Tools Are Invisible"}, {"id": 770890227, "item_id": 48180639, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48180639", "by": "backscratches", "date": "2026-05-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use yazi for a visual filepicker and zellij for tabs.", "excerpt": "I use .MD files, helix terminal editor with a markdown LSP called markdown-oxide that replicates the obsidian feature set (like bidirectional links, tags, making new notes automatically, two keys get you from a in-line footnote to the definition and back again, etc), and rumdl which is a super efficient and customizable markdown linter and formatter (semantic line breaks far the win!) . Since it is all helix I can ju", "context": "", "use_case": "file picker", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Files.md \u2013 open-source alternative to Obsidian"}, {"id": 790415968, "item_id": 49400998, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49400998", "by": "folkrav", "date": "2026-08-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "yazi as a file explorer", "excerpt": "Not OP but, I regularly use : - yazi as a file explorer - lazygit for git - tmux/zellij as multiplexers - fzf left and right for a bunch of utils (terminal history, switching between projects in zellij/tmux when working in multi-project workspaces, etc) - neovim as a text editor - glow for markdown reading - currently on pi for my home harness, CC at work I'm probably missing a few but those are the ones I use more o", "context": "", "use_case": "file explorer", "switched_from": "", "story": "Stop Making TUIs"}]}, {"label": "Speed", "summary": "Described as fast and light, with heavily async design that keeps the UI responsive.", "quotes": [{"id": 736483857, "item_id": 46030241, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46030241", "by": "jauntywundrkind", "date": "2025-11-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I really appreciate modern heavily async software like the Yazi file manager.", "excerpt": "Rtorrent is pretty fine. But for as long as I used it, the UI would hang on me for sometimes multiple seconds. I really appreciate modern heavily async software like the Yazi file manager. Maintaining user responsiveness feels so nice. https://github.com/sxyazi/yazi", "context": "", "use_case": "file manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "A ncurses-based command line torrent client for high performance"}, {"id": 792860626, "item_id": 49553789, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49553789", "by": "bspeelm", "date": "2026-09-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "landed on Zellij and Yazi, made a dev console alias, and was off. Faster, lighter, less distracting.", "excerpt": "I was tired of IDEs shipping with AI bloatware and telemetry. 1 GB for a \"lightweight\" IDE is fairly laughable. And all of that would be fine if I used any of it. I didn't. What I actually used came down to three things: a file browser, a console for my code assist, and a console for CLI commands. (I admit a debugger occasionally but less so these days.) So I went looking at what the terminal could do in 2026 and lan", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal file browser", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bothy \u2013 a one-command terminal workspace from tools you trust"}]}, {"label": "Image previews", "summary": "Shows images inside Kitty terminal, which helps on remote directories.", "quotes": [{"id": 732839521, "item_id": 45802470, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45802470", "by": "ziotom78", "date": "2025-11-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Most of the time, I rely on it within Yazi [1], a TUI file manager", "excerpt": "I run Kitty and use this feature regularly. Most of the time, I rely on it within Yazi [1], a TUI file manager, but I can also display plots within the Julia REPL, thanks to the KittyTerminalImages.jl package [2]. It's even more crucial when I'm navigating a remote directory and need to check an image file, as I usually have timg [3] installed on those servers. Once you discover how valuable this is, it becomes a per", "context": "", "use_case": "TUI file manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions"}]}, {"label": "Touch support", "summary": "Responds to touch when run in Termux on Android.", "quotes": [{"id": 749685473, "item_id": 46855342, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46855342", "by": "Fluorescence", "date": "2026-02-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm impressed that TUI apps like yazi/nnn respond to touch.", "excerpt": "I love termux. I can run my normal terminal environment - tmux, fish, just, git, zoxide, yazi etc. and build rust apps. With decent auto-complete/fuzzy-search, it's very ergonomic for only needing a couple of key presses to get things done. I'm impressed that TUI apps like yazi/nnn respond to touch. It's a very viable app platform for those inclined. Out of curiosity, is there an equivalent on ios with that level of ", "context": "", "use_case": "file manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Termux"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": ["for terminal users", "IDE alternative", "for Linux users", "works in Termux", "for Kitty users"], "use_cases": ["file manager", "terminal file browser", "file explorer", "terminal file browsing", "file picker", "file management"], "compared": [{"slug": "zellij", "name": "Zellij", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "neovim", "name": "Neovim", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "fzf", "name": "fzf", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "claude-code", "name": "Claude Code", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "tmux", "name": "tmux", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49815457", "title": "Phosphor Deck \u2013 one zellij session your phone and laptop share", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49553788", "title": "Bothy \u2013 a one-command terminal workspace from tools you trust", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49384210", "title": "Stop Making TUIs", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49376265", "title": "Linux 7.2 Released", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858121", "title": "Good Tools Are Invisible", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48179677", "title": "Show HN: Files.md \u2013 open-source alternative to Obsidian", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 2}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 797047331, "item_id": 49815458, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49815458", "by": "rsmedrano", "date": "2026-09-23", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Every tool it shows you (zellij, yazi, btop, gping, ctop, rclone)", "excerpt": "Hi HN, author here. I got tired of juggling separate SSH sessions across my phone, laptop and an old e-reader just to check on a few machines at home, so I built this: one persistent zellij session on whatever machine stays on (I call it \"the brain\"), laid out once from a profile. Every device with a terminal drops into the same session -- same tabs, same scrollback. A few decisions I'd be curious to hear opinions on", "context": "", "use_case": "file manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Phosphor Deck \u2013 one zellij session your phone and laptop share"}, {"id": 792860626, "item_id": 49553789, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49553789", "by": "bspeelm", "date": "2026-09-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "landed on Zellij and Yazi, made a dev console alias, and was off. Faster, lighter, less distracting.", "excerpt": "I was tired of IDEs shipping with AI bloatware and telemetry. 1 GB for a \"lightweight\" IDE is fairly laughable. And all of that would be fine if I used any of it. I didn't. What I actually used came down to three things: a file browser, a console for my code assist, and a console for CLI commands. (I admit a debugger occasionally but less so these days.) So I went looking at what the terminal could do in 2026 and lan", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal file browser", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bothy \u2013 a one-command terminal workspace from tools you trust"}, {"id": 790415968, "item_id": 49400998, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49400998", "by": "folkrav", "date": "2026-08-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "yazi as a file explorer", "excerpt": "Not OP but, I regularly use : - yazi as a file explorer - lazygit for git - tmux/zellij as multiplexers - fzf left and right for a bunch of utils (terminal history, switching between projects in zellij/tmux when working in multi-project workspaces, etc) - neovim as a text editor - glow for markdown reading - currently on pi for my home harness, CC at work I'm probably missing a few but those are the ones I use more o", "context": "", "use_case": "file explorer", "switched_from": "", "story": "Stop Making TUIs"}, {"id": 790204257, "item_id": 49387766, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49387766", "by": "Alien1Being", "date": "2026-08-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "particularly when combined with TUI applications like yazi, lsd, fzf , neovim etc", "excerpt": "Linux is so very predictably stable from a desktop user perspective . It is an absolute pleasure to use , particularly when combined with TUI applications like yazi, lsd, fzf , neovim etc Been using it since the early nineties . At work I use Windows Server 2025 as my desktop ( the alternative would be the dreadful AI infested Windows 11). While Windows Server 2025 is not dreadful , the Linux experience is so much ni", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Linux 7.2 Released"}, {"id": 781953696, "item_id": 48872106, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48872106", "by": "xarwex", "date": "2026-07-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Take a look at yazi https://yazi-rs.github.io/, I find it pretty good for looking at my files.", "excerpt": "Take a look at yazi https://yazi-rs.github.io/, I find it pretty good for looking at my files.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal file browsing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Good Tools Are Invisible"}, {"id": 770890227, "item_id": 48180639, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48180639", "by": "backscratches", "date": "2026-05-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use yazi for a visual filepicker and zellij for tabs.", "excerpt": "I use .MD files, helix terminal editor with a markdown LSP called markdown-oxide that replicates the obsidian feature set (like bidirectional links, tags, making new notes automatically, two keys get you from a in-line footnote to the definition and back again, etc), and rumdl which is a super efficient and customizable markdown linter and formatter (semantic line breaks far the win!) . Since it is all helix I can ju", "context": "", "use_case": "file picker", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Files.md \u2013 open-source alternative to Obsidian"}, {"id": 749685473, "item_id": 46855342, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46855342", "by": "Fluorescence", "date": "2026-02-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm impressed that TUI apps like yazi/nnn respond to touch.", "excerpt": "I love termux. I can run my normal terminal environment - tmux, fish, just, git, zoxide, yazi etc. and build rust apps. With decent auto-complete/fuzzy-search, it's very ergonomic for only needing a couple of key presses to get things done. I'm impressed that TUI apps like yazi/nnn respond to touch. It's a very viable app platform for those inclined. Out of curiosity, is there an equivalent on ios with that level of ", "context": "", "use_case": "file manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Termux"}, {"id": 744098257, "item_id": 46506141, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46506141", "by": "submeta", "date": "2026-01-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "NeoVim, Yazi, and Tmux are my go-to tools.", "excerpt": "NeoVim, Yazi, and Tmux are my go-to tools. When I need AI and Agents, I create multiple instances of Claude Code or Codex. However, I don\u2019t let them interfere with my workflow if I don\u2019t need them.", "context": "", "use_case": "file management", "switched_from": "", "story": "I switched from VSCode to Zed"}, {"id": 736483857, "item_id": 46030241, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46030241", "by": "jauntywundrkind", "date": "2025-11-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I really appreciate modern heavily async software like the Yazi file manager.", "excerpt": "Rtorrent is pretty fine. But for as long as I used it, the UI would hang on me for sometimes multiple seconds. I really appreciate modern heavily async software like the Yazi file manager. Maintaining user responsiveness feels so nice. https://github.com/sxyazi/yazi", "context": "", "use_case": "file manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "A ncurses-based command line torrent client for high performance"}, {"id": 732839521, "item_id": 45802470, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45802470", "by": "ziotom78", "date": "2025-11-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Most of the time, I rely on it within Yazi [1], a TUI file manager", "excerpt": "I run Kitty and use this feature regularly. Most of the time, I rely on it within Yazi [1], a TUI file manager, but I can also display plots within the Julia REPL, thanks to the KittyTerminalImages.jl package [2]. It's even more crucial when I'm navigating a remote directory and need to check an image file, as I usually have timg [3] installed on those servers. Once you discover how valuable this is, it becomes a per", "context": "", "use_case": "TUI file manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions"}]}