Netrw-ish File Explorer Today

[baldwindavid]

The builtin file drawer in Zed is quite capable and the default vim keymap can make it act somewhat similar to netrw. Hitting - will open the drawer at the location of the current file and you can move up and down with k and j and such.

At the same time, I still find it jarring to look to the left rather than within the current pane I'm focused on. Additionally, when the drawer opens you see the entire hierarchy. Sometimes I can't immediately see where I'm at in the tree.

For those reasons I'm still a big fan of the netrw-ish experience where you open an in-pane directory browser at the current file location and can navigate from there. I used https://github.com/tpope/vim-vinegar in vim and then https://github.com/danprince/vsnetrw in vscode to approximate.

There is no builtin way to do this in Zed but... leveraging the builtin terminal and a custom keybinding can now get us most of the way there.

"-": [
  "workspace::SendKeystrokes",
  ": c r p enter : new center terminal enter ya space cmd-v enter"
],

This does the following:

• Opens the command palette
• Copies the current file path (c r p ends up as "Copy Relative Path")
• Open the command palette again
• Add a "New Center Terminal" - this will add a terminal in the current pane rather than in the dock at the bottom
• inserts the text "ya " and then paste the current file path in

This opens the yazi terminal file manager at the location of the current file. You could use any file manager of course (lf, nnn, etc).

While this doesn't carry exactly the same design style as Zed it goes without saying that it is really good at file management. It also has a really good file previewer. I can't quite get image previews to work inside Zed presumably because of Alacritty limitations, but that's okay.

Regardless of the file manager you use, opening a file will create a new tab in the same pane in Zed. That's pretty okay though I'd typically rather have it open in the same tab or at least close the file manager tab. You do end up with some extra tabs. If we eventually have a tab-less Zed option perhaps this problem goes away though.

Anyway, thanks to the Zed team (@osiewicz , @ConradIrwin , @SomeoneToIgnore and more) for continuing to unlock workflows. Just the last couple releases with SendKeystrokes and tasks have really opened things up.

[baldwindavid]

Here is a recording of usage of the yazi file explorer. It's actually quite a lot better than netrw given the live preview.

zed-yazi-720.mov

[baldwindavid]

Other thing you might try is to type the same commands as in the keybinding...

: c r p enter cmd-w : new center terminal enter ya_zed space cmd-v enter

Type each of those things and see that the path is copied, that cmd-w closes the tab, that a new center terminal is opened, etc. If it doesn't work by hand it won't work via keybinding either.

[xtrasmal]

I got it working.
I'm not sure what I was thinking, but replacing : with cmd-shift-p was the obvious move to make it work.

[
  {
    "context": "Workspace",
    "bindings": {
      "cmd-ctrl-alt-shift-z": [
        "workspace::SendKeystrokes",
        "cmd-shift-p crp enter cmd-shift-p wnct enter ya_zed space cmd-v enter"
      ]
    }
  }
]

[baldwindavid]

Great, glad it's working! This thread will probably help someone in the future too.

[kakoc]

I followed the flow and in the end, when I press enter over selected element in yazi that tab with yazi closes and I'm getting back to the place from which I opened yazi but the file over which I pressed enter in yazi wasn't opened. Are there any suggestions which could I missing?

UPD:
I managed to solve the issue by running cli: install since zed was missing in the terminal originally.

[jon-walstedt]

Hi, I am trying this out but it seems that it runs the entire sequence of keystrokes before the terminal has opened so I never get any input in my terminal. Any trick to forwarding the ya_zed space cmd-v enter part to the terminal? or is there any delay that i can add if there is a race condition?

[lionel-]

Regardless of the file manager you use, opening a file will create a new tab in the same pane in Zed. That's pretty okay though I'd typically rather have it open in the same tab or at least close the file manager tab. You do end up with some extra tabs. If we eventually have a tab-less Zed option perhaps this problem goes away though.

Maybe a CLI argument for zed to open a file in the current tab would get us there? Then we'd set EDITOR in the yazi tab to use that argument.

[baldwindavid]

fyi, this no longer works as of last week's preview release and looks like no plans for it to work again. See #21610 and #21584

Appears opening in the bottom pane via task is about the closest now.

cc @jon-walstedt

[baldwindavid]

Great news. This now can work without any hacky keypress simulation by running a task that opens in a center terminal. This is now in main via #22004