The fastest GUI file manager on Omarchy.
Install · Views · Performance · Keyboard · Releases
- 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
Tthen1to7, found withtag: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.
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 --defaultRun 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 fleaFile chooser only, development build and removal
Use Flea for portal Open/Save dialogs without changing your default file manager:
flea --pickerTo 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 fleaInstallation details cover dependencies, desktop integration and removal.
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.
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.
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.
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 = 0.34Measured on 2 November 2026 with the 0.4.0 candidate at 8a7fd82f, before the final
release cut. Tables show medians; full observed ranges, versions and methodology
are recorded with the data.
One folder of empty files on btrfs, three runs per app. Flea and Strata use List; the other apps use their installed icon views.
| File manager | Version | First window | Settled | PSS | CPU |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flea | 0.4.0 | 319 ms | 0.75 s | 63.0 MiB | 0.53 s |
| Dolphin | 26.08.2 | 791 ms | 5.25 s | 235.1 MiB | 8.18 s |
| Nautilus | 51.1.0 | 931 ms | 20.33 s | 337.2 MiB | 21.67 s |
| Nemo | 6.6.4 | 928 ms | 22.61 s | 479.3 MiB | 26.03 s |
| PCManFM | 1.4.0 | 479 ms | 35.29 s | 124.4 MiB | 24.25 s |
| Strata | 1.1.1 | 835 ms | 1.80 s | 159.1 MiB | 1.83 s |
| Thunar | 4.20.10 | 601 ms | 19.71 s | 394.9 MiB | 19.82 s |
Flea's samples are fresh; unchanged rival measurements were reused after matching the machine, session, versions and fixture. First window means compositor registration; settled means 500 ms of process-tree CPU quiet. Neither measures paint or input readiness.
Thirty measured runs per engine, plus two five-round noise batches.
| Search engine | Version | First result | Backend PSS after indexing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flea | 0.4.0 | 166 ms | 75.7 MiB |
| nd | 0.2.1 | 1617 ms | 145.6 MiB |
| fff | 0.11.1 | 3172 ms | 221.2 MiB |
| FSearch | 0.3.0 | 4938 ms | 157.0 MiB |
The clock runs from backend searchopen to the first nonempty current-generation IPC rows.
Process creation and initial listing are outside it. These are backend measurements, not
GUI-open timings. Flea's mixed typed-first quality still trails nd and fff;
the results include those losses.
Three interleaved cold runs per build on the same minipc.
| Metric | 0.4.0 | 0.3.12 |
|---|---|---|
| First window | 348 ms | 525 ms |
| GUI + backend PSS | 58.6 MiB | 88.4 MiB |
| Resident GPU memory | 83.4 MiB | 142.7 MiB |
The baseline is a frozen copy of the 0.3.12 package. PSS and GPU memory are sampled three seconds after mapping.
The 2,000-entry fixture contains 1,800 thumbnailable media files and 200 text controls. Flea's first-window, settled and CPU values have three valid samples. Memory has only two, and its observed use is higher than Thunar's and Nemo's. Incomplete measurements for the other apps prevent a complete media ranking. Recorded values and gaps.
Data and provenance · Method · Historical results
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.
Requires Omarchy and Rust. See installation details for runtime and optional dependencies.
cargo build --locked --release --workspace
./target/release/flea --guiPass 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.
See PLUGINS.md to write, validate, install and debug a Flea plugin, with a working example for each kind.
If this saved you an afternoon, you can sponsor me on GitHub or buy me a coffee.
MIT.
The language marks in ui/js/LangMarkPaths.js use simple-icons
geometry (CC0 1.0) and remain their owners' trademarks.