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otter-files is a native Wayland file manager. Browse local disks, SFTP, and SMB. Tabs, split panes, thumbnails, archives, trash, and bulk rename come with it.

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Usage

Launch from otter-launcher or the Otter Files desktop entry. Locations accept local paths plus file://, sftp://, smb://, and archive:// URIs. Archive URIs look like archive:///path/file.zip!/member. Opening a supported archive shows a read-only virtual folder. Back and Up work as usual.

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Remote locations

Press Ctrl+K or use the blank-area context menu to open Connect to Server for SFTP and SMB. Leave the SMB credential form empty to request anonymous access. The dialog does not store credentials. Bookmark a remote location yourself with Ctrl+B or the context menu if you want it saved. UDisks2 mount, unmount, and eject go through the running desktop polkit agent.

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File operations

Copy, move, rename, create, trash, delete, undo/redo, and conflict handling. Bulk Rename supports find/replace and templates ({name}, {ext}, {n}, %n, ###). It preserves extensions by default, previews four entries, and will not overwrite existing names. Create a symbolic link from the selected-item context menu or Ctrl+Shift+L. Links are relative to the current folder and work locally or over native SFTP. Open in Terminal follows xdg-terminal-exec, keeps the selected folder as the child working directory, and falls back to otter-term when that helper is missing.

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Archives and thumbnails

Create and extract tar (gzip/bzip2/xz/zstd), zip, 7z, and RAR/CBR. Archive members are browsable but not launched directly. Use Extract Here on the containing archive to open them. bsdtar, tar, zip, and unzip are detected at runtime. Install 7z and unrar/rar for 7z and RAR. RAR creation needs rar. Image thumbnails decode natively. Video and other formats use bounded thumbnailers, including remote SFTP/SMB files by default.

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Configuration

Config file: ~/.config/otter-shell/otter-files.conf Edit it in otter-settings on the Files tab (shown when otter-files is installed), or by hand. Remote thumbnails are on by default and capped by remote_thumbnail_limit_mb (16 MiB). Set thumbnail_policy to local_only or never to opt out.

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Dependencies

The packaged otter-files depends on desktop-file-utils, shared-mime-info, and ffmpegthumbnailer (video thumbnails), plus Otter shared libraries and fonts.