- C++ 95.7%
- Shell 2.3%
- CMake 1.6%
- C 0.3%
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21de0e2c13runs-on: ubuntu-latest never got picked up - the self-hosted runner is registered under the label "linux", not "ubuntu-latest". Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_018M6uJn9t15UV2C1KqV7DP6 |
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Minnow
A simple, lightweight file manager for KDE, built against Qt6 and KDE Frameworks (KIO). Meant as a smaller alternative to Dolphin.
| Light | Dark |
|---|---|
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Features
- Grid and list views, switchable per folder
- Per-folder sorting, independent of other folders
- Places sidebar (Home, Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Music, Videos, Trash), each can be hidden
- Pin folders to the sidebar, group them into your own custom sections
- Mounted drives shown automatically below your pins
- Address bar navigation, back/forward/up history, name filtering
- Adjustable icon size (Small/Medium/Large/Huge)
- Copy, cut/paste, rename, new folder, move to trash, permanent delete (all via KIO)
- Undo/redo for everything except permanent delete
- Compress files/folders to a
.zip, or extract.zip/.7z/.tar/.tar.gz/.tar.bz2/.tar.xzarchives, without blocking the UI on large archives - Right-click menu shows the common actions by default, with a "Show More Options" entry for the rest
- Open a specific directory from the command line:
minnow /some/path
Installing
Arch Linux (AUR): two packages, minnow (builds from source) and minnow-bin (prebuilt).
yay -S minnow
# or
yay -S minnow-bin
Snap: snapcraft.io/minnow
sudo snap install minnow
From source: see Building and Running below.
Dependencies
- Qt6 (Widgets)
- KDE Frameworks 6: CoreAddons, ConfigWidgets, WidgetsAddons, KIO
- CMake ≥ 3.16, a C++17 compiler
Building
cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build -j"$(nproc)"
To install system-wide instead:
cmake --install build --prefix /usr/local
Running
./build/minnow # opens your home directory
./build/minnow /some/path # opens a specific directory (or a file's parent directory)
Known limitations
On KDE Plasma, "Show in folder" from a browser may still open Dolphin instead of Minnow, even with Minnow set as your default file manager. This isn't a Minnow bug - browsers use the org.freedesktop.FileManager1 D-Bus interface for this (not just the inode/directory MIME association), and on Plasma that name is held from login by a persistent dolphin --daemon (tied to plasma-dolphin.service) that refuses to hand it over to anything else. Every non-Dolphin file manager on Plasma runs into the same thing. The only fix is disabling Dolphin's background service:
systemctl --user mask plasma-dolphin.service
# then log out and back in
Reversible with systemctl --user unmask plasma-dolphin.service.
Testing
ctest --test-dir build --output-on-failure
Covers the path-computation logic (folder navigation, rename/mkdir destination paths).
Contributing
PRs are welcome - open one if you'd like to fix something or add a feature. No guarantees it'll get merged, but if it's solid I'm happy to take it.