File Explorer

Fresh includes a built-in file explorer.

• Toggle Sidebar: Use Ctrl+B to show/hide the file explorer sidebar. When a nested file is active, toggling on expands the tree and reveals the file.
• Focus: Use Ctrl+E to switch focus between the file explorer and editor.
• Sidebar sections: Plugins can add sections under the file tree — the Markdown Contents outline, for example. Alt+Shift+N cycles the keyboard through the sidebar (file explorer, then each section, then back to the editor) and Alt+Shift+P runs the cycle the other way; both work from inside the tree, a section, the dock or a terminal (in a terminal these two chords go to the editor, not to the program running in it). A hidden sidebar is shown first. A section belongs to the window — or the file — it was made for, so another workspace's outline never appears in yours.
• Reveal: Showing or focusing the explorer selects the current file in the tree. When it cannot — an unnamed buffer, or a file outside the project — the status bar says so.
• Navigation: Use the arrow keys to move up and down the file tree.
• Sticky parents: When you scroll through a nested folder, its expanded ancestor folders remain visible at the top of the sidebar.

Opening Files

• Enter opens the selected file and focuses the editor.
• Arrow Up/Down also opens the highlighted file in a preview tab automatically as you move — so you can scan files without leaving the keyboard.
• Single-click opens a file in an ephemeral preview tab — the next single-click on another file replaces it instead of piling up tabs. Any real commitment — editing the file, pressing Enter, double-clicking, clicking the tab itself, or a layout action like splitting — promotes the preview to a permanent tab.
• Double-click opens the file in a permanent tab and focuses the editor.

Preview tabs are enabled by default. Turn them off in the Settings UI if you prefer every click to open a permanent tab.

Cut / Copy / Paste and Multi-Selection

• Ctrl+C / Ctrl+X / Ctrl+V — copy, cut, or paste the selection. Same-directory copy auto-appends copy / copy 2 etc. Same-directory cut is a no-op. Paste into a different directory with a name conflict asks per file, in a confirmation dialog offering Overwrite, Overwrite All, Skip, Skip All and Cancel (each button's own underlined letter works as an accelerator).
• Cut-pending items are visually dimmed. Cancel a pending cut with Escape or by pasting back into the same directory.
• Shift+Up / Shift+Down extend a multi-select range from the current anchor; all clipboard operations (and delete) act on the whole selection.
• Buffers follow files — renaming or moving a file (via cut+paste) relocates any open buffers pointing at it; deleting a file closes its buffer. Renaming a directory relocates buffers for every file inside it.

Following the Active File

file_explorer.follow_active_buffer (off by default) keeps the tree pointed at whatever file you are editing: switch tabs, or jump to a definition in another file, and the sidebar expands to that file and moves its selection onto it.

It stays out of your way while you are using the tree yourself — with the keyboard inside the sidebar, the selection is yours and nothing moves it. It also does nothing while the sidebar is hidden, or for a file outside the project root.

Toggling the sidebar on, or focusing it with Ctrl+E, reveals the active file either way; that is the explicit "show me where I am", and this setting does not govern it.

Width

The sidebar's width is configurable via file_explorer.width in settings. It accepts either form:

• A percent of the terminal width, e.g. "30%".
• An absolute number of columns, e.g. "24".

Dragging the divider preserves whichever form you configured — a sidebar set up as a percent stays a percent after you drag it.

Visibility and .gitignore

• The file explorer respects your .gitignore by default, and auto-reloads when .gitignore changes on disk.
• A file is shown only if it isn't hidden by any active filter — so if a file is both a dotfile and gitignored, it takes enabling both toggles to see it.
• Use Toggle Hidden Files and Toggle Gitignored Files from the command palette to flip either filter. Both persist across restarts.

Sorting

Entries sort in natural order: directories first, then files, with digit runs compared numerically (so chapter-2 comes before chapter-10). Sorting is case-insensitive.

See it in action: Preview Tabs in the 0.3.0 blog.