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Flea

Flea

The fastest GUI file manager on Omarchy.

Built for Omarchy

Install · Views · Performance · Keyboard · Releases

Flea 0.3.0 cycling through ten Omarchy themes, with the iPhone on the Devices rail and a photo in the preview column

  • Four views. List, columns, grid and two panes, with tabs and natural sorting.
  • Quick Look. Space previews images, PDFs, text, media, archives and 3D model thumbnails.
  • File operations. Copy, move, rename, trash, compress and extract, with undo. Rename many files at once.
  • Tags. Seven tags in your theme's colours, set with T then 1 to 7, found with tag:red.
  • Search. Ranked results as you type.
  • Network and sharing. SMB, SFTP, FTPS, WebDAV, NFS, Dropbox and Taildrop.
  • Devices. USB and encrypted drives, phones and cameras, mounted from the sidebar.
  • Disk images. Write an ISO or IMG to a USB drive, even compressed or zipped, and verify every byte.
  • Desktop integration. Default file manager, “Show in folder” and Open/Save dialogs.
  • Your settings. Omarchy text sizes, configurable menus, and Default, Vim, Mac or Windows keys.

Install

Flea is available only from the Omarchy Package Repository. Install it and make it your default file manager, file chooser and the app opened by Super+Shift+F:

omarchy pkg add flea && flea --default

Run flea --default from a terminal in your session so file dialogs switch at once. flea --default off undoes it, and Settings > About has the same switch. To try Flea without changing your defaults, run only omarchy pkg add flea. Updates come with omarchy update.

On an AUR flea-bin or flea-git install, run this and answer y when pacman asks to remove it:

sudo pacman -S flea
File chooser only, development build and removal

Use Flea for portal Open/Save dialogs without changing your default file manager:

flea --picker

To try unreleased changes from main, build Flea from source.

Before removing Flea, undo its desktop integration, then drop the package:

flea --default off
omarchy pkg drop flea

Installation details cover dependencies, desktop integration and removal.

Views

List for details, grid for photos and clips, columns for browsing with a preview, and two panes (Ctrl+4) for two folders side by side. Flea can remember the view for each folder.

Grid view with image and video thumbnails Columns view with the preview column, file details and the iPhone on the Devices rail

Space opens Quick Look in any view. Page through a PDF, play media, zoom an image with + and -, or look inside an archive, ISO image or package.

PDF preview with page navigation

The shelf in the Omarchy bar holds files you send to it from any menu. Drag them out into any app, or pin the ones you reuse.

Dragging moves files within a device and copies them across devices. Hold Ctrl to copy, Shift to move, or both to link. Drop files on Trash in the sidebar to trash them, and z brings them back. Drag a file into a terminal to paste its path.

The shelf card open over Flea, with thumbnails, pins and the last three screenshots An iPhone camera roll browsed over AFC, with HEIC thumbnails and a preview

Transparency follows Omarchy's Window Transparency (Trigger > Appearance > Window Transparency). To set Flea's own, give a value from 0 to 1 in a theme's shell.toml, or in ~/.config/omarchy/shell.toml for every theme:

[flea]
background-alpha = 0.34

Performance

Measured on 12 October 2026, using the 0.3.10 source tree. Cold caches, 3 runs per app, medians below. 7 GUI apps on the same machine.

Speed

btrfs, 100000 visible entries, filesystem btrfs

File manager Version First window Settled
Flea 0.3.10, source 5816ab88 505 ms 1.00 s
Dolphin 26.08.2-1 752 ms 5.07 s
Nautilus 51.0.1-2 921 ms 6.59 s
Nemo 6.6.4-1 857 ms 21.78 s
PCManFM 1.4.0-2 448 ms 33.54 s
Strata v1.0.0 588 ms 1.84 s
Thunar 4.20.10-1 518 ms 19.45 s

btrfs, 1700 visible entries, filesystem btrfs

File manager Version First window Settled Thumbnails
Flea 0.3.10, source 5816ab88 541 ms 1.83 s 43
Dolphin 26.08.2-1 733 ms 13.18 s 500
Nautilus 51.0.1-2 876 ms 18.19 s 641
Nemo 6.6.4-1 842 ms 1.71 s not measured
PCManFM 1.4.0-2 416 ms 114.99 s 700
Strata v1.0.0 656 ms 3.26 s not measured
Thunar 4.20.10-1 507 ms 0.93 s not measured

Note: Nemo, Thunar: "unranked: nothing reached the thumbnail cache so its work was not measured". Note: Strata: "unranked: its watches saw 0 renders for 86 opened fixture files so neither is a count".

btrfs, 2000 visible entries, filesystem btrfs

File manager Version First window Settled Thumbnails
Flea 0.3.10, source 5816ab88 530 ms 1.77 s 43
Dolphin 26.08.2-1 747 ms 13.76 s 642
Nautilus 51.0.1-2 897 ms 19.29 s 641
Nemo 6.6.4-1 862 ms 3.40 s 60
PCManFM 1.4.0-2 420 ms Timed out 690
Strata v1.0.0 599 ms 3.45 s not measured
Thunar 4.20.10-1 513 ms 1.00 s not measured

Note: Strata: "unranked: its watches saw 0 renders for 86 opened fixture files so neither is a count". Note: Thunar: "unranked: nothing reached the thumbnail cache so its work was not measured".

Memory and CPU

btrfs, 100000 visible entries, filesystem btrfs

File manager Version Window PSS CPU
Flea 0.3.10, source 5816ab88 80.7 MiB 0.75 s
Dolphin 26.08.2-1 202.6 MiB 7.67 s
Nautilus 51.0.1-2 321.4 MiB 8.27 s
Nemo 6.6.4-1 472.8 MiB 25.00 s
PCManFM 1.4.0-2 123.0 MiB 23.05 s
Strata v1.0.0 130.6 MiB 1.53 s
Thunar 4.20.10-1 358.5 MiB 19.33 s

btrfs, 1700 visible entries, filesystem btrfs

File manager Version Window PSS CPU
Flea 0.3.10, source 5816ab88 93.6 MiB 5.04 s
Dolphin 26.08.2-1 99.3 MiB 64.30 s
Nautilus 51.0.1-2 176.4 MiB 114.32 s
Nemo 6.6.4-1 45.1 MiB 1.66 s
PCManFM 1.4.0-2 42.0 MiB 171.36 s
Strata v1.0.0 86.3 MiB 7.61 s
Thunar 4.20.10-1 34.2 MiB 0.90 s

btrfs, 2000 visible entries, filesystem btrfs

File manager Version Window PSS CPU
Flea 0.3.10, source 5816ab88 93.5 MiB 4.82 s
Dolphin 26.08.2-1 102.8 MiB 68.07 s
Nautilus 51.0.1-2 176.4 MiB 120.73 s
Nemo 6.6.4-1 54.7 MiB 9.38 s
PCManFM 1.4.0-2 39.6 MiB 154.08 s
Strata v1.0.0 87.5 MiB 7.32 s
Thunar 4.20.10-1 35.2 MiB 0.95 s

"First window" records compositor registration. "Settled" means 500 ms without process-tree CPU activity; neither measures input readiness. PSS covers the window process, excluding helpers and GPU memory. CPU is everything the app started, counted from a control group of its own, so sandboxed thumbnailers are in it. Shared libraries affect PSS. Results describe this machine and workload. Settled time and CPU are not ranked against an app whose thumbnail work was not measured; the notes under each speed table name those apps.

Method · Local CSV · Local manifest · Matched CSV · Matched manifest · Media CSV · Media manifest

Keyboard

Press ? for the full keymap, or , to change settings.

Action Keys
Move / parent / enter j k / h / l
Open with the default app Enter
Quick Look Space
Select / extend selection v / Shift + arrows
Copy / cut / paste y x p, or Ctrl+C Ctrl+X Ctrl+V
Rename / trash / undo / redo r or F2 / dd or Delete / z / Ctrl+Shift+Z
Tag the selection T, then 1 to 7
New folder Ctrl+Shift+N
Search / filter the list f / /
Enter a path, or jump to a folder by name : or Ctrl+L, then a path or a name
List / columns / grid / two panes Ctrl+1 / Ctrl+2 / Ctrl+3 / Ctrl+4
Next / previous area Tab / Shift+Tab
New tab / close tab / switch tab t / w / 1 to 9
Open terminal / context menu Ctrl+T / m
Show hidden files .
Zoom an image in Quick Look / fit + - / 0

The Windows preset uses Ctrl+Shift+1/2/3/4 for views and Ctrl+Y for redo. See the full key table for preset bindings and pointer actions.

Build

Requires Omarchy, Quickshell 0.3.1 or newer, and Rust. See installation details for runtime and optional dependencies.

cargo build --release
FLEA_UI="$PWD/ui" ./target/release/flea --gui

Pass a directory to open it, or --select <path> to reveal a file.

./tests/run-all.sh runs the headless suites, and the protocol guide documents the backend.

Support

If this saved you an afternoon, you can sponsor me on GitHub or buy me a coffee.

Licence

MIT.

The language marks in ui/js/LangMarkPaths.js use simple-icons geometry (CC0 1.0) and remain their owners' trademarks.

About

The fastest GUI file manager on Omarchy.

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