COSMIC Files

COSMIC Files is the file manager built for the COSMIC desktop environment by System76. Written entirely in Rust on top of libcosmic — the iced-based UI toolkit shared across the COSMIC suite — it provides a clean, tab-based browsing experience with optional dual-pane layout for side-by-side directory navigation. It is pre-alpha software, actively developed alongside the rest of the COSMIC DE, and ships as the default file manager on Pop!_OS 24.04 and later.

Features

• Tabbed file browsing — Open multiple directories as tabs in a single window, with full keyboard navigation between them.
• Dual-pane mode — Split the window into two independent panels for drag-and-drop transfers or side-by-side comparison of directory contents.
• Thumbnail previews — Automatically generates and displays image thumbnails inline in icon view.
• Built-in archive applet — Ships with cosmic-files-applet, a panel integration for quick archive creation and extraction from the desktop.
• Compress and extract via context menu — Right-click any file or selection to compress to a common archive format or extract in place, without leaving the file manager.
• COSMIC theme integration — Automatically follows the COSMIC dark/light mode preference and respects the active accent colour, requiring no manual configuration.
• Keyboard shortcuts — Follows common desktop conventions (Ctrl+T new tab, Ctrl+W close tab, F2 rename, Delete trash, Ctrl+H show hidden files).
• Wayland-native — Built against Wayland APIs via libcosmic; no X11 dependency or XWayland requirement.

Installation

COSMIC Files is pre-alpha and does not yet have stable binary releases outside of Pop!_OS. The recommended ways to obtain it are:

Pop!_OS (ships by default)

COSMIC Files is included in Pop!_OS 24.04 and later as the default file manager. No additional installation steps are needed.

Build from source (all Linux distributions)

# Install Rust via rustup if you haven't already
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

# Install system dependencies (Debian / Ubuntu)
sudo apt install just libxkbcommon-dev pkg-config

# Install system dependencies (Fedora)
sudo dnf install just libxkbcommon-devel pkg-config

# Clone and build
git clone https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-files
cd cosmic-files
just build-release
just install

Arch Linux (AUR)

paru -S cosmic-files-git

Nix / NixOS

nix-env -iA nixpkgs.cosmic-files

Note: As pre-alpha software, the build dependencies and process may change between commits. Check the repository README for the most up-to-date instructions.

Quick Start

After launching COSMIC Files, it opens to your home directory. A few things worth knowing out of the box:

# Open a new tab
# Ctrl+T

# Close the current tab
# Ctrl+W

# Toggle dual-pane mode
# View menu → Dual Pane (or the toolbar toggle)

# Show / hide hidden files (dotfiles)
# Ctrl+H

# Rename selected file
# F2

# Move selected file(s) to trash
# Delete

# Open a terminal in the current directory
# Right-click the background → Open Terminal Here

To compress or extract an archive from within the file manager, right-click any file or a multi-file selection:

# Right-click a .tar.gz, .zip, or other supported archive → Extract Here
# Right-click a file or selection → Compress → choose format (zip, tar.gz, etc.)

Tabs persist their individual locations independently, so you can navigate freely in one tab without disturbing another.

COSMIC Files vs Other Linux File Managers

If you are running a different desktop and want a stable Rust-adjacent file manager today, Yazi is an excellent TUI option written in Rust, while Dolphin remains the most feature-complete native GUI file manager on Linux outside of the COSMIC ecosystem.