How to Set Up and Configure LF (The Best Terminal File Manager)

Tired of clicking endlessly just to get to the files you need? Ready to improve your workflow with a million keybindings to navigate your filesystem fast? Ditch your slow, uncool graphical file manager and learn how to use the lf file explorer. I'll go over how to set it up, configure it, add icons, image previews and more. Afraid it's too much work to actually learn how to use? Learn everything you need to know in just 16 minutes and never leave the home row of your keyboard again...

0:00 Why use a terminal file manager?
1:01 Why use lf?
1:24 Installation
1:38 Basic usage
4:46 Configuration
10:48 Icons
12:41 Media previews
15:30 Conclusion

[mateusgomes]

Thank you! You helped me a lot to better understand how to use lf and how to get image previews with ueberzug! I hope you're doing well and that your channel grows much more!

[markring]

Thank you Eric! I’ve been looking for this information for a few weeks. This video was perfect 👍

[ZakariaHABRI]

You can put the two lines in lfrc-ueberzug in your lfrc, it works the same with less files! Thanks a lot for all the awesome videos, I'm loving my system more with every modification.

[Lobaluna]

Thank you! A big hug! Thanks for all your great educational videos!

[anh]

Thanks a lot! You helped me getting started on lf!

[miracleweb]

Thank you again for the amazing video! Also I'm now learning VIM first time, because of your channel, lol)

Can you make a video, how to setup i3wm (or what tiling manager do you use)?

[CyperN]

Very good video. It helped me out! Thnx...

[danieldiaz]

Great! very clear and very good configuration. Can you compress files?

[MoreChannelNoise]

Cant decide between this and Cfiles, both are so good

[ruiumvl]

Thank You!!! I love your video with LF . How to set the colors ? Could you share the code ? thank you

[Mantikal]

Great video. I like the look, feel and speed of this file manager.
If you have an audio, video or text file - how do you open them with your preferred apps or how would you change your preferred apps to run those files - using this file manager?
Also, how would one go about having a transparent back ground?

[abdoulayebalde]

Hey thanks for the video. Actually I need your help. I install LF and customize it the way I want but for example if i wanna play music or video when I click on it it's showing " Running shell exit status 127" what should I do? I am using MPV for both music and video.

[RogueRen]

Maybe I'm doing something wrong but a bunch of the later stuff in the video doesn't work for me (Pop!_OS 21.10 w/ KDE Plasma). Previews just don't work in the terminal at all even after installing all the prerequisites, I just get text saying "binary" of stuff that isn't a directory or text file, and the link you have to the icons is just gone.

[kidamanecer]

Hi Eric!

I got a question. Is it plausible to use it when dealing with downloads and file uploads with firefox or any other browser?
When i have to upload a file to any site, it usually pulls up my default file manager (i'm currently running a openSUSE machine w/ KDE Plasma)

When I try to move from KDE to something more minimal, let's say i3 or bspwm, I'm forced to use whichever file manager Firefox is feeling like to pick. That's inconvenient, and to be fair Dolphin is great because it gives you the opportunity to filter, see previews, etc. Whereas the other graphical file managers are awful to work with.

However, if I can make Firefox to work with LF (or at least Ranger) I'll do the full change, since that's the only feature holding me back.

Thanks for your content!

[subhajitmishra]

Awesome!!! Thank you! Btw, what's your color scheme for the terminal? Also the font

[Echoes_of_Albatross]

Thanks, It helps, what I was looking for.

[cmespy]

Iam a little lost on the installation part of this program. However great job explaining it usage

[ironmanlifts]

New to LF. What are the tags for ? I presume to manipulate the tags fine with a custom command? In nvim tags allow you to jump to files. In LF I presume you create your own custom command with the file it creates.

[glidersuzuki]

Lf is good. But I'm just love Vifm. It has a easy to setup preview. It also has a dual pane.

[gizmotruveauth]

can you please explain how to make all the gadgets work together within one lf session?