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From the Vifm home page:

  Vifm is a file manager with curses interface, which provides Vim-like environment for managing objects within file systems, extended with some useful ideas from mutt.
  If you use vi, Vifm gives you complete keyboard control over your files without having to learn a new set of commands.

## Installation

Install the vifm package.

## Help file

Basic information about Vifm is given in the help file. You can view it by opening Vifm and typing:

    :h

Another good source of information is vifm(1).

## Customizing Vifm

Vifm creates and populates a `vifm` directory in XDG_CONFIG_HOME containing the following:

- `vifmrc` - a well commented configuration file that can be edited to suit your working style.
- `vifm-help.txt` - the help text
- `vifminfo` - bookmarks and trash contents - it is not recommended to edit this file by hand
- `Trash/` directory - self explanatory - see `:h vifm-trash` in vifm
- `scripts/` directory - see `:h vifm-scripts` in vifm
- `colors/` directory - color schemes - see `:h vifm-colors` in vifm
  - `Default.vifm` - well commented default color scheme - can be copied to create user-created color schemes

To get started, read the information available in:

- `/usr/share/doc/vifm/`
- `/usr/share/vifm/vifm-help.txt` or `man vifm`
- `:h` in vifm

### Color schemes

The `~/.vifm/colors` directory contains the color schemes. The format is outlined in the file and follows vi/vim syntax highlight format. It is basically:

    highlight group cterm=attribute ctermfg=color ctermbg=color

An example color scheme looks like this:

    highlight Win cterm=none ctermfg=white ctermbg=black
    highlight Directory cterm=bold ctermfg=cyan ctermbg=none
    highlight Link cterm=bold ctermfg=yellow ctermbg=none
    highlight BrokenLink cterm=bold ctermfg=red ctermbg=none
    highlight Socket cterm=bold ctermfg=magenta ctermbg=none
    highlight Device cterm=bold ctermfg=red ctermbg=none
    highlight Fifo cterm=bold ctermfg=cyan ctermbg=none
    highlight Executable cterm=bold ctermfg=green ctermbg=none
    highlight Selected cterm=bold ctermfg=magenta ctermbg=none
    highlight CurrLine cterm=bold ctermfg=none ctermbg=blue
    highlight TopLine cterm=none ctermfg=black ctermbg=white
    highlight TopLineSel cterm=bold ctermfg=black ctermbg=none
    highlight StatusLine cterm=bold ctermfg=black ctermbg=white
    highlight WildMenu cterm=underline,reverse ctermfg=white ctermbg=black
    highlight CmdLine cterm=none ctermfg=white ctermbg=black
    highlight ErrorMsg cterm=none ctermfg=red ctermbg=black
    highlight Border cterm=none ctermfg=black ctermbg=white

You can also highlight different file types using regular expressions:

    highlight /^.*\.(mp3|ogg|oga|flac|m4a)$/ ctermfg=magenta
    highlight /^.*\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|tiff|webp|bmp|svg|svgz)$/ ctermfg=yellow
    highlight /^.*\.(zip|gz|bz2|xz|tar|tgz|tbz2|7z|rar|iso|rpm|deb)$/ ctermfg=red

Other color schemes can be seen here.

### Key mapping

As of 0.6.2, you can customize key bindings in Vifm. These can be set from the command mode using the map command, like so:

    :map ] :s

However, these mappings will not be saved between sessions. To map a key permanently, place them in your `vifmrc`. More sample mappings can be seen at the end of that file.

### Opening files in Vifm

You can assign applications to file types in `vifmrc`, e.g.:

    filetype *.jpg,*.jpeg,*.png,*.gif feh %f 2>/dev/null &
    filetype *.md5 md5sum -c %f

Several defaults can be found in `vifmrc`. These can be edited or added following the same format.

#### Browse images in current directory with feh

    filetype *.jpg,*.jpeg,*.png,*.gif
           \ {View in feh}
           \ feh -FZ %d --start-at %d/%c 2>/dev/null

This displays your selected image in feh and enables you to browse all other images in the directory as well, in their default order.

### User commands

You can also create custom commands in `vifmrc`, e.g.:

    command df df -h %m 2> /dev/null
    command diff vim -d %f %F

#### Creating symbolic links

    command link ln -s %d/%f %D

When you call

    :link

a link of the selected file is made in the other directory (if you are in split view). It even works with multiple files selected with visual (v) or tag (t).

#### Torrent creation

Make a .torrent of the current file in the other tab's directory:

    command mkt mktorrent -p -a [your announce url here] -o %D/%f.torrent %d/%f

### Marks

Marks can be set the same way as in vi. To set a mark for current file:

    m[a-z][A-Z][0-9]

Go to a file identified by a mark:

    '[a-z][A-Z][0-9]

Vifm will remember the marks between sessions.

### Previews

Provided poppler is installed, putting

    fileviewer *.pdf
      \ pdftotext %c -

into `vifmrc` enables PDF previewing using pdftotext. The `%c` is a vifm macro for the current file under the cursor. The preview is activated with

    :view

Neat image previewing can be achieved using img2txt from libcaca:

    fileviewer *.png,*.jpeg,*.jpg
     \ img2txt %c

Previewing the contents of tar archives:

    fileviewer *.tar,*.tar.gz
     \ tar -tvf %c

For previewing HTML documents, suitable programs are text-based browsers including lynx, links or w3m:

    fileviewer *.html
     \ w3m %c

Previewing office files by converting them to HTML and then rendering that with w3m:

    fileviewer *.odt,*.doc,*.docx,*.ods,*.xls,*.xlsx
     \ libreoffice --convert-to html --outdir /tmp/ %c &>/dev/null && w3m /tmp/%c:r.html

For printing text instead of previewing the file (for binary files for example):

    fileviewer *.exe
     \ echo Binary file: no preview available. %i

`%i` is there because `%c` is implicitly used if no other macro is used. In this case, `%i` is ignored.

For handling filetypes not handled by anything else, put `fileviewer * <your command>` as the last fileviewer option in your configuration file.

Further useful programs for previews include

- tree for directory previews
- mp3info for viewing information about mp3 files
- mediainfo for the mediainfo program (audio and video information)
- highlight for syntax highlighting

#### Using vifmimg

It is also possible to clone vifmimg into your `~/.config/vifm` directory. Than you need to create an alias to run the `vifmrun` script, which will prepare everything for the previews:

    alias v="~/.config/vifm/vifmrun ."

`vifm` should start just by typing `v` in your terminal now.

Note:

- It is necessary to install ueberzug otherwise the preview will not work.
- If you selected a file which starts displaying the preview and you want to switch to the shell, it might happen that the preview does not disappear. In that case you will need to add a new command:

      command! clear vifmimg clear

  and add this command to your mappings which are quitting your current `vifm` runtime, by going into a shell:

      nmap S :clear

  If you type `S`, you will enter your shell and the preview will be removed.

## Tips and tricks

### Useful key mappings

#### Single stroke to access command line

    nmap ; :

#### Faster movement

Hold shift to jump five files

    nnoremap J 5j
    nnoremap K 5k

#### Panel resizing

Just type `-` or `_` to resize the panels

    nnoremap - <C-w>5<
    nnoremap _ <C-w>5>

#### Yanking

Yank the parent directory path by typing `yd`

    nnoremap yd :!echo -n %d | xclip -selection clipboard %i<cr>:echo expand('%"d') "is yanked to clipboard"<cr>

Yank the absolute path to the selected element by typing `yf`

    nnoremap yf :!echo -n %c:p | xclip -selection clipboard %i<cr>:echo expand('%"c:p') "is yanked to clipboard"<cr>

In a Wayland enviroment replace `xclip -selection clipboard` with wl-copy.

### Non-vim users

If you use `vi`, `nvim` (Neovim), or another editor, you can add `set vicmd=vi`, `set vicmd=nvim`, or equivalent to the bottom of your `vifmrc` file.

### Total size of selected files

To get the total size of selected files change %s to %E in `vifmrc`, like so:

    set statusline="  %t%= %A %10u:%-7g %15E %20d  "

### Use output of external program in status line

Here is a status line that calls lsattr, passing it the name of the file currently under the cursor:

    set statusline="%{system('lsattr -l ' . expand('%c'))}"

### Print the currently selected file

If you want to print a file with your printer, then you can create a command with `lp`:

    command! print lp -n 1 -o sides=two-sided-long-edge %f

You just need to select your file which should be printed and type `:print`

### Drag and Drop

You will need to install dragon-dropAUR and add a new command:

    command! dragon dragon-drop -a -x %f

If you want, you can also set a shortcut to this new command:

    nmap <C-d> :dragon<CR>

So if you press `Ctrl+d` a window for your currently selected file is created so you can drop it somewhere else. If you want to drag multiple files, just select the files with `t` and press `Ctrl+d`.

For more information see expression syntax and available functions.

Categories:

- File managers
- Console applications