tere

tere - a faster alternative to cd + ls

tere is a terminal file explorer. It is a faster alternative to using cd and ls to browse folders in your terminal. tere only really does one thing: it provides a TUI for efficiently navigating to a folder, and then prints the path to that folder when you exit. By configuring your shell to cd to the printed folder, you can move around in your filesystem very quickly.

Note that tere is not a file manager, it can only be used to browse folders, not to create, rename or delete them.

tere aims to be minimal and simple. It should be obvious how to use it. Navigating the file system should be efficient and require as few keystrokes as possible. A great source of inspiration for tere is the "type-ahead search" functionality found in many GUI file managers.

"Tere" means "hello" in Estonian. It also feels nice to type.

Setup

To use tere for changing directories, you need to install it, and then configure your shell to cd to the folder tere prints when it exits. Here's how to do it:

Step 1: Obtain a copy of tere

This can be done in various ways:

• Download the latest release.
• Install tere with Homebrew by running brew install tere.
• Install tere with Nix by running nix-env -i tere.
• Install tere with Cargo by running cargo install tere.
• Install tere with Pacman by running pacman -S tere.
• Install tere with Scoop by running scoop install tere.
• Build from source, see below.

Step 2: Configure your shell to cd using tere

tere only prints a folder when it exits. To make your shell actually cd to this folder, you have to define a function or alias, since the working directory cannot be changed by a subprocess. See instructions for your shell below.

Bash/Zsh

Put this in your .bashrc or .zshrc:

tere() {
    local result=$(command tere "$@")
    [ -n "$result" ] && cd -- "$result"
}

fish

Put this in your config.fish:

function tere
    set --local result (command tere $argv)
    [ -n "$result" ] && cd -- "$result"
end

Xonsh

Put this in your .xonshrc (Xonsh v0.10. or newer is required):

def _tere(args):
    result = $(tere @(args)).strip()
    if result:
        cd @(result)

aliases["tere"] = _tere

Nushell

Put this in your config.nu (Nushell 0.88.0 or newer is required):

def --wrapped --env tere [...args]: {
    let result = ( ^tere ...$args )
    if $result != "" {
        cd $result
    }
}

PowerShell

Put this in your $PROFILE:

function Invoke-Tere() {
    $result = . (Get-Command -CommandType Application tere) $args
    if ($result) {
        Set-Location $result
    }
}
Set-Alias tere Invoke-Tere

Windows Command Prompt (CMD)

Put this in a batch script file called tere.bat in a folder included in your PATH environment variable such as C:\Windows:

@echo off

rem set the location/path of the tere executable here...
SET TereEXE=C:\path\to\tere.exe

FOR /F "tokens=*" %%a in ('%TereEXE% %*') do SET OUTPUT=%%a
IF ["%OUTPUT%"] == [""] goto :EOF
cd %OUTPUT%

Note that if you want to make tere work with both PowerShell and CMD, you should not put tere.exe to a location that is in your PATH, because then the .exe will be run instead of the .bat. Place tere.exe somewhere that is not in your PATH, and use the full path to the exe in both the .bat file and in the PowerShell $PROFILE.

If tere is not in your PATH, use an absolute path to the tere binary in your shell config file. For example, for Bash/Zsh, you would need to replace local result=$(command tere "$@") with local result=$(/path/to/tere "$@"), or for PowerShell, replace (Get-Command -CommandType Application tere) with C:\path\to\tere.exe.

If instructions for your shell are missing, feel free to send a pull request that includes them! See the instructions below for some more information.

Step 3: That's it

The next time you open a new shell, the command tere should work. You can of course rename the shell function/alias to whatever you like. The shell configuration also acts as a config file for tere, just add the options you want (see tere --help).

Supported platforms

tere works on Linux, Windows and macOS. For Linux and Windows, binaries are provided in the releases. For Mac, you can install using Homebrew or Cargo, or build from source.

If you get libc errors on Linux, try the musl version.

User guide

Basic navigation

You can navigate folders in tere by moving the cursor around and by typing to search. By default, the cursor can be moved up or down using the arrow keys, and pressing Enter or the right arrow → to enter the highlighted folder. You can move to the parent folder by pressing Enter on the parent folder item .., or with the left arrow ←. Once you have navigated to the folder you want, exit tere by pressing Esc. If you have configured your shell correctly, your shell's current working directory should now be set to that folder.

Keyboard shortcuts

tere has the following keyboard shortcuts by default:

Description	Default shortcut(s)	Action name
Enter directory under cursor	Enter or → or Alt-↓ or Alt-l or if not searching, Space	ChangeDir
Go to parent directory	← or Alt-↑ or Alt-h or if not searching, Backspace or -	ChangeDirParent
Go to home directory	~ or Ctrl-Home or Ctrl-Alt-h	ChangeDirHome
Go to root directory	/ or Alt-r	ChangeDirRoot
Move cursor up	↑ or Alt-k	CursorUp
Move cursor down	↓ or Alt-j	CursorDown
Move cursor up by one screen	Page Up or Ctrl-u or Alt-u	CursorUpScreen
Move cursor down by one screen	Page Down or Ctrl-d or Alt-d	CursorDownScreen
Move cursor to the top	Home or Alt-g	CursorTop
Move cursor to the bottom	End or Alt-Shift-g	CursorBottom
Erase a character from the search	Backspace if searching	EraseSearchChar
Clear the search	Esc if searching	ClearSearch
Toggle filter search	Alt-f	ChangeFilterSearchMode
Change case sensitivity mode	Alt-c	ChangeCaseSensitiveMode
Change gap search mode	Ctrl-f	ChangeGapSearchMode
Change sorting mode	Alt-s	ChangeSortMode
Refresh current directory	Ctrl-r	RefreshListing
Show help screen	?	Help
Exit tere	Esc or Alt-q	Exit
Enter directory and exit tere	Alt-Enter or Ctrl-Space	ChangeDirAndExit
Exit tere without changing directory	Ctrl-c	ExitWithoutCd

Some of the shortcuts starting with Alt should be familiar to Vim users.

Customizing keyboard shortcuts

All of the keyboard shortcuts listed above can be customized using the --map (or -m) CLI option. Keyboard mappings can be either of the form --map key-combination:action or --map key-combination:context:action, where key-combination is a key combination, such as ctrl-x, action is a valid action name (for example Exit or ChangeDir, see the table above or --help for a full list of actions), and the optional context specifies the context in which the mappling applies (for example Searching and NotSearching, see --help). To remove a mapping, use --map key-combination:None. Multiple mappings can be made by providing --map multiple times, or by using a comma-separated list of mappings: --map combination1:action1,combination2:action2.

For further details and examples, see the output of --help.

Searching

To search for an item in the current folder, just type some letters. tere will incrementally highlight all folders that match the search query.

While searching, moving the cursor up or down jumps between only the items that match the search. The search query, as well as the number of matching items is shown at the bottom of the screen.

If only one folder matches your current search, tere will highlight it, and change the working directory to that folder. This way you can navigate folders very quickly.

To stop searching, press Esc or erase all search characters by pressing Backspace.

Note that by default, tere searches only folders and not files, since tere cannot do anything with files. This can be changed with the --files option. For further details, see below, or check the output of --help.

By default, the searching uses "smart case", meaning that if the query contains only lowercase letters, case is ignored, but if there are uppercase letters, the search is case sensitive. This can be changed with the --ignore-case and --case-sensitive options, or with the keyboard shortcut Alt-c by default.

Additionally, in the default search mode, "gap search" (sometimes also known as fuzzy search) is enabled. This means that the search matches any folder name as long as it starts with the same character as the search query, and contains the rest of the query characters, even if there are other characters between them. For example, searching for dt would match both DeskTop and DocumenTs. With the --gap-search-anywhere option, the first character of the query doesn't have to match the first character of a folder/file name. The gap search can be disabled with the --normal-search and --normal-search-anywhere options, which only allow matching consecutive characters, either from the start or anywhere within the folder/file name, respsectively. The gap search behavior can also be changed with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-f by default. See --help for details.

Mouse navigation

Although tere is mainly keyboard-focused, it is also possible to navigate using the mouse. To maximize compatibility, mouse support is off by default, and has to be enabled with the option --mouse=on. With the mouse enabled, you can change to a folder by clicking on it, and move to the parent folder by right-clicking.

CLI options

You can adjust the behavior of tere by passing the following CLI options to it:

• --help or -h: Print a short help and all CLI options. Note that the output goes to stderr, to not interfere with cd ing in the shell functions defined during the setup.
• --version or -V: Print the version of tere. This also goes to stderr.
• --filter-search or -f / --no-filter-search or -F: If --filter-search is set, show only items that match the current search query in the listing. Otherwise all items are shown in the listing while searching (this is the default behavior).
• --files or -l ignore / hide / match (or i / h / m): How to handle fi