My FAVORITE File Manager - Complete Midnight Commander Tutorial
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- čas přidán 31. 07. 2024
- Midnight Commander is an amazing file manager that has been around since 1994. In this video, I'll take you through a complete tutorial all the way from basic navigation through to customising your own menu items and themes.
See the accompanying guide on my website: techcraft.co/videos/2022/5/my...
INSTALLING
==========
Install Midnight Commander with:
* `brew install mc` on Mac with Homebrew
* `sudo apt install mc` on Ubuntu, Debian and Raspberry Pi OS
* `sudo pacman -S mc` on ArchLinux
CHAPTERS
=========
00:00 - Start
00:40 - Tour of Midnight Commander
02:27 - Getting Started
03:01 - UI Overview
04:11 - Customising Layout
04:47 - Directory Panels
05:33 - Info & Quick Look
06:09 - Panel Switching
06:22 - Faster Navigation
07:35 - Copy, Move & Delete
09:14 - Bulk Operations
09:53 - View & Edit
11:23 - Images, Movies & PDFs
13:25 - Working with Archive Files
15:31 - Accessing Remote Machines
16:44 - Hotlist
17:31 - Custom Themes
LINKS
=====
* Midnight Commander - midnight-commander.org/
* Dracula Theme - draculatheme.com/
GEAR
=====
* iPad Pro 11" - geni.us/H0qJ
* Apple Magic Keyboard - geni.us/8uBg
* Anker Thunderbolt 3 Cable - geni.us/BTOsQ
* Aluminium Armour Case - geni.us/M5ph
* Synology DS920+ NAS - geni.us/2yKgZp
SUPPORT THE CHANNEL
=====================
* Buy me a coffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/techcrafted
AFFILIATE LINKS
==============
Tech Craft is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk - Krátké a kreslené filmy
Excellent synopsis of the features of mc. I watch mc tutorials for fun, and your is one of the best out there!
Norton & Volkov commander vibes when people used MS DOS. Nostalgia
Thank you for posting these videos about CLI tools for MacOS (and other OSs). I'm a long time (40 years) PC user who has recently purchased an M1 Mac. Your CLI-focused videos have been really helpful.
This is my new favorite tool. I cant believe I've been using 'cd' commands by hand all this time
Wow, another amazingly comprehensive video. That looks like a really powerful bit of software, definitely going to check it out.
I've used mc for many years, and still found some new tricks... Thank You :)
Thank you, Rob. I’ve already used your video two times to setup mc for my home and work machine. It’s just great!
Happy to have helped!
I've used MC for over 20 years and never even knew it ran on macos or windows haha. Great video! One of my favorite tools.
I've been using MC as long as I've been using linux, since early 2000s.
During DOS I've used volkov commander and dos navigator - clones of NC.
"norton commander for linux" was probably the first thing I looked up when I started using linux. In USSR NC and its clones were so popular, books about dos included a section on how to use it. It was THE way to use dos. (On windows I still use FAR - another clone).
So nice to see people talking about orthodox file managers. And oh god how I love that no matter where I'll distrohop, MC would still function the same.
Dude that's so helpful thank you! Been wanting to learn how to use mc properly for a while now
Thank you so much for this! Had heard of mc before but hadn't really delved into its capabilities. I always felt that both using `cp` in the terminal and using GUI file management windows can both be really cumbersome, but didn't realize there was a great alternative until this video
Amen brother!
I'm a Norton Commander, 1Dir, and Xtree veteran.
I think I first used it under Yggdrasil.
Under 40? Nope!
This video was extremely helpful and educational. Although I've been using mc for a long time, there were bits and pieces I didn't know. Thanks again for sharing your knowledge.
Rats, you beat me to it with your comment. There's lots of stuff I know but there's also quite a few items I hadn't learned. Great video, and a keeper.
I’m switching to Mac soon and your channel is godsent
Great Tutorial. We appreciate your work !!
Love your style of presenting v easy to follow!
WOW!!! I was a huge Norton Commander back in the day. I think I was the only one in my company who used it. Loved it...
Great tutorial, this makes Midnight Commander very usable for me.
Wooww... wonderful mc, and wonderful your tutorial !! Thanks
Very nice walkthrough, thank you!
Booted up MX yesterday and found Midnight Commander. Just the perfect name for something oldschool like this.
As someone that grew up using DOS and MS DOS Shell, there's something so comforting about the bright pastel colours. Same with Edit and Qbasic for that matter.
amazing guide to mc. well done!
What a great video! Thanks for this.
Thanks for a great video I have used MC for many years as default filemanager in linux both on desktop and server
Brings back MS-DOS memories - I’m setting it up today on my work device!
Thanks for this. I've known of Midnight Commander probably as long as it has existed (and I used Norton back in the day too), but I never took the time to learn to use it. I might just give it a go now.
Thank you for sharing your expertises!
great video- never thought mc is so powerful
Very helpful video (as usual), thanks! May be for someone come in handy - instead of control+v and option+v, I use (on mac os) fn+left arrow and fn+right arrow
Great video. Very useful indeed. Thanks
What an excellent video, very well made! I really like to switch back to MC. Back in the day I used NC in MSDos, and I used MC a bit for Linux as well. It's very powerful program and gives me a lot of nostalgic vibes. The only thing I can't figure out are the file extensions. For some reason they won't open in the default programs set for Windows.
* Midnight Commander is available in most package managers including:
** Homebrew on the Mac
** APT on Ubuntu, Debian and Raspberry Pi OS
** Pacman on ArchLinux
* See the accompanying guide here: techcraft.co/videos/2022/5/my-favorite-file-manager-complete-midnight-commander-tutorial/
Yes, MC is good especially for bare CLI terminal usage. I have used others like Krusader (linux) and missed some their advanced features until I found 'Double Commander'. DC is amazing because you can do almost everything these do, it runs on all OSes and is open source. One of my favorite features having multiple tabs for different directories open. 😀
Double Commander is ugly as hell. Still on Gtk2. And all functionaly, especially file search functionality is so user unfriendly. All this managers would need a rewite and a good course in modern UX
Thanks, very complete!
I actually applied at Norton when they were in 1 Wilshire in Santa Monica. He also had a house on the Vineyard near my cousins in Oaks Bluff. This reminds me of X tree also a favorite in the early days of PC utilities. So I have added Warp I will look at it I am not comfortable with AI stuff, but I will try to check it out. I suppose I have to go through the training to get the file manager. I will look later I. Thanks!😀
Wow, amazing, I'm use a litle of ranger but now I prever MC.
f**k me! Man, you're good. No, seriously, you're really good!
No bullshit, straight to the point, the right information, clearly explained.
And no annoying intro! Thank you!
mc has been such a gift over the years. I used to use Norton Commander all the time back in the DOS day. It was the one utility I really missed when I starting working in Xenix/UNIX back in the 80s. Back then it was a TSR if I remember correctly (Or was that Borland's Sidekick?)
Though I've been using mc for a couple decades now, I still find there's more to discover about this amazing tool.
The other file management utility I love is ncdu, which is the first thing I add to a new install.
Thanks for the video! Well done.
Thanks for the kind words! I've been focusing a lot on tightening up the content and culling any nonsense.
I'm also a fan of ncdu, it was even in my latest CLI tools video: czcams.com/video/szehPBOwqlI/video.html
Thanks for doing this! I've been using MC for years, and still learned some new things. :)
Very helpful. Thanks
Fantastic!!
A blast from the past for sure. I did not know it was still around. Thanks will circle back now and have a better look at it. I am trying to think if MC was around back in the C64 days?
I don't recall it but there was certainly lots of software with the same aesthetic
Love this video! I have been a total commander guy for decades. Unfortunatly tc is not very useful in nix environments. I gave Commander One a try on mac a couple of years ago and tried out mc here and there, but sticked to ssh, scp, cd, cp and core utils for the most part. This video encouraged me and helped to smoothly transition to mc on wls, linux and mac. Thanks a million, Rob!
I would love an overview of broot from you, I really like your delivery
Thanks man.
Good video.
Ok. I’m in :D
Would like to have always the directory sizes displayed.
Having this in Windows (Total Commander + Everything) which is super handy!
These "CLI tools" are really cool
Wow…. I remember Norton Commander … pleasant blast from the past.
I didn't realize that Norton Commander is older that DOS shell.
May have missed it, but I didn't see mention of Ctrl-O, which hides both left and right windows, leaving at just a prompt (though I think the bottom buttons still show). With this, if you type a cli command and want to review its output, just hit Ctrl-O, view the results that were hidden by the windows, then Ctrl-O again to restore the left/right panes.
Love mc, and formerly Norton Commander :)
I left that out because the video was already too long. It's a useful one though to be sure!
Hello Rob, this is an excellent video. Brought back so many good memories of Norton Commanded so many years ago. I miss the part of getting MC to use Preview as a pdf viewer, can you please help elaborate the exact lines that need modification to the mc.ext file. Thanks in advance.
You Brits are tech savvy 👍
used to use a similar tool on ol AMIGA back in the time.. looong time ago :D
A truly excellent introduction! kitty and mc work great. Thank you so much!
The only problem i have on macos is that "macos_option_as_alt yes" in the kitty configuration will enable the option key for mc, but also disable it for kitty, so that, for example, typing a tilde using Option-N is not available anymore. Do you have a solution for this?
I would really loved MC if it had a VIM keybindings
Thanks for the video!
You might like vifm which is a similar tool but with heavily VIM-inspired UX.
My favorite file manager is Emacs with Dired. And you can easy open files on remote devices where you have SSH access.
So, start Emacs. Open the directory by press C-x C-f (extended find file), and enter a direcory (use Tab key to help selecting the right directory, like in shell). Then Emacs open the directory in Dired mode.
If you want to open and edit a archive, just open the archive in Emacs with C-x C-f and then give the name of the archive (use Tab key to help selecting the file, like in the shell). When you are ready, you can save the Dired window with C-x C-s (extended save file). If you don't care about the changes, just do C-x k (extended kill buffer).
So you want to open a file on remote machine? Open a file with C-x C-f and write this (yes, you MUST start with "/") /ssh:user@machine:/file it will open the file in the machine after log in with user user. And yes, they Tab key works here too. Yes, you can open files, directories and archives there too.
And one more thing, you want to edit a file which you have access to with sudo command. Well, if you want to edit a file you need sudo access, open the file with C-x C-f, and then type /sudo::/etc/motd and the file will be open through sudo right.
And yes, if you want to run a shell in the same place as in all those files, just M-x shell will start a shell in the same place the file in the buffer came from. You can later close the connection with C-x k as usual to remove a buffer.
Also, the easy way to change buffer among those that exist, just do C-x b and name the buffer (yes, you can use Tab key here too) and press enter, as usual.
Create a video please. I want to use Emacs for everything.
And yes, Emacs are available in all major OS:es.
Norton Ghost reminiscing 😊
I keep forgetting how good MC is. Tomorrow I install it on my new linux install and my old Win10 install at work, Thanks
The cool thing is. Once you know MC, you'll feel right at home on any system as long as you have terminal access.
I have mc installed on my iPad thru a alpine Linux , ISH and I’m having issues using a Bluetooth keyboard , or the internal iPad keyboard, should I be using a different keyboard, problems are t keys don’t work, but a mouse works ?
nice
I was wondering:
if you needed to drag and drop files somewhere, e.g. when you wanted to share them via some sort messenger. How would you tackle that? You can't really drag files from the terminal, can you?
I am using a Mac myself and tried a little program called dragon but it didn't work well with my window manager sadly (yabai).
Do you have any ideas or tips on this or do I actually still need to use Finder for this?
The menu at the bottom reminds me of htop and nano text editor
Great, but how did you have the top window color matching a terminal background (1:51 vs 22:00)? Is this just a MacOS dark theme came into place? I have seen your other videos - and the top window line - same as terminal background.
That's `macos_titlebar_color #282a36` in ~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf
Interesting. But whenever I try to mess with terminal colors (using nord, kanagawa or other schemes) there is always something which is completely unusable with bright blue background and poor contrast: mc (solvable), ncdu, yast2, ... and best option is to turn these into black&white.
how to select disk? like: hdd1 on left, hdd2 on right?
Great video. I just have one question, for some reason, some shortcuts like "shift+=", and "alt+c" don't work I have to use "esc+c" and "esc+shift+=", instead. I also can't select multiple files using shift+down arrow, is it my terminal? Or a setting?
edit: I Installed kitty, and everything works except the quick CD command.
Yeah, the terminal handing of the shortcut keys often requires customisation. I find Kitty to just work.
Quick cd does work for me. What Kitty config do you have?
Awesome video! Best intro to mc!👍
Could you please share the snippet for zip? Couldn't find the link that you mention at 21:41.
Thanks for the kind words. Here's a gist with the correct content for the ZIP menu item: gist.github.com/robharrop/0f44a24520d688107a951b366313b75e
Thanks for this, I was an avid user of NC back in the day, then to dos navigator then win commander and still to this day use Total commander.
Adding the zip config 8 You did not leave the config, and it's not linked in your web page, so I copied it from the screen, but when highlighting and zipping, it zips my whole ubuntu profile, not the selected files only. Could you just confirm or post the correct script, thanks, much appreciated.
Far manager for windows is similar to MC but it support MTP and viewing files in android phones that connected with a USB cable. I wish MC had this option too.
atleast on linux if you have a daemon that auto mounts usb devices mc works with them
BTW, I know that this is doesn't matter that much but for the video and default open & view commands in the file extension handler file you typed them incorrectly. You used "&s" in the video instead of "%s" and "$s" instead of "%s" for the default view command.
Gah. Good spot. It should be %s as you say.
Is it possible to change shortcuts to VIM-like? I found some posts but they all seem to be outdated. Update: I figured out that in my case probably Ranger will be a better choice as it by design follows vim-style.
Interesting. On Windows machine, I'm using frequently Total Commander. So, on Mac as newbie I was searching something as close as it gets.
Creators of Total Commander are recommending for Mac (as they don't develop Mac version) something called Commander One or maybe Nimble commander. Unfortunately, they are somewhat similar but not at level I was hoping. Mainly shortcuts are not the same (many of them).
Is Midnight worth the switch from commander One? Or there is nothing as close to Total CMD on mac platform?
My own experience is that nothing comes close to Total Commander. I started out as a developer on Windows and used TC a lot. I've tried a bunch of graphical Commander clones on Mac and none seem to match up. Midnight Commander is the best all round option in my opinion.
@@tech_craft Many thanks, I'll give a shot. Surprisingly those graphical mac "dual panel" commanders have limited resources to learn how to do things. I've searched but ended many times just to try somehow do it by myself.
In case of Midnight I have this interesting instructional video.
I would have a look at Emacs, as the Dired mode is quite nice to manage files, archives and remote files. As I have given some examples of in another post here.
There are some learning curve of the short commands, but then again, not that hard. And as a bonus, they are basically the same as in the shell. So all the movement/text editing keys works in shell too.
C-a C-e C-b C-f C-p C-n C-s C-k C-y M-b M-f C-d M-d etc. (C-a means control a and M-x means Meta x, that is Alt-x or Esc and the x in a sequence). Try them out and you will know what they do. Yes, you can exchange some with the arrows keys, yes they also work with Control and Meta.
nothing about navigating and moving files in drives to USB drives so forth?
Do you have a issue running mc with zsh?
I have a problem when set SHELL='/usr/bin/zsh' and trying to get into subshell with ctrl + o. It always goes to home folder :(
For me Ctrl-o toggles me between the shell and mc, which is correct, I've not seen it ever navigate to a directory though.
Just thought about this. Other than the file extension handler file. Couldn't you copy the mc configuration from your Mac to another other OS? (i.e. Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, etc) Therefore not having to repeat the manual process of configuring MC.
Oh sure, and I do. I use a tool called `yadm` to manage all the configs for my different machines. The config is stored in Git and then `yadm` grabs the files and puts them in the right place. There's support for customising files on a per-host/platform basis so it's even possible to have an mc.ext for Linux and an mc.ext for Mac.
@@tech_craft Interesting, I'll have to look into that. I mainly run FreeBSD, but I'll usually have a copy of Linux running in the background via bhyve, and I'll occasionally boot into Windows for software that doesn't have a supported replacement on FreeBSD or Linux.
How to change a small part of the file name WITHOUT typing the full file name? E.g., you have a file "This is a sample file from 2023.txt" and you want to change 2023 to 2024, how to do it? The only way I could think of using Move and type the full file name, which is very laborious.
12:27 it's impossible for me to edit that file, I get an "Illegal instruction" line overlaid to the text; then, whatever else I type results in some weird chunks of text made of numbers and semicolons and no other command works
The joys of vi! My guess is that your setup is dropping you into vi as the editor (as mine does). Vi is a modal editor which means you have to switch in and out of insert mode to be able to add in new content. If you're not familiar with vi then I think the easiest thing to do is to use a different editor. To do this run `export EDITOR=nano` before launching `mc` to use the nano editor which has a much more familiar interface.
@@tech_craft Yes, that did it! Brilliant and useful as always, thanks!
The other day i was doing a thing with DOS and my Volkov Commander there i accidentally switched to the info pane, and it was editing the file description. I knew about this feature some 25 years ago but forgot. But i never knew where the descriptions were stored, so instead of saving the edit and looking what pops up, i decided to google it. I knew this was how it was in Norton Commander as well so i used that as a keyword instead. For some reason, your video is among top search results, but doesn't answer this question. Indeed i don't even know whether MC has this feature. Does it?
What MC doesn't have is tabs. If you use any of the more modern two-pane file managers, with perhaps Total Commander being the first i remember with the feature, you can use tabs in addition to dual pane operation. Feels incomplete if you're doing somewhat heavy file work where you need to juggle 3 or more directories. What's your suggestion/alternative to using tabs?
You have tabs in terminal, like iTerm2
@@martin_kuchar Tabs in the file manager belong in the pane, not for the whole file manager. So let's say i have a source directory at the left and some number of target directories in the tabs on the right, and i keep switching between them for file operations.
Any reason you choose MC over Emacs Dired? It seems like they do a lot of the same stuff, and it looks like you already use Emacs as your editor.
Mostly it's inertia, I was using mc before I started using Emacs.
6:00 pane options
reminds me DOS blue screen of Norton Commander, and Total Commander (Windows version of NC)
Reminds me two logical disks on one 20MB hard drive cause two “disks” was cool and one skd.
IIRC, so did DOS Shell.
@@sc0or And only a short period earlier, all the cool folks had dual 5.25" floppy drives.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade That was strange, really ) 3 and 5 was a typical config. Then a zip drive replaced a slot for 5, and x2 speed CD later then =)
I’m also on macOS but I have some trouble finding/setting up the backtab/S-tab key when I’m going to set up the bindings? The M-tab was esc+tab. Do you have any idea? Currently using ISO layout keyboard.
Are you using Kitty terminal or the built-in?
@@tech_craft none of them. I’m currently using iTerm. But I did try Kitty and configured everything, but went back to using iTerm anyway because I’m so used to it, and everything else works pretty smooth. I also swapped to a new Keychron K8 Pro keyboard from the default Apple Magic keyboard. But I don’t know, Kitty wasn’t really my thing 😊
@@tech_craft I have configured mc pretty OK now, including all the open commands etc. One thing I can’t find in the description/or your guide, is the script or whatever for making the option 8 (zip stuff)..?
Another question, what do you think of Ranger, compared to mc? I know it takes a little more configuring to set up properly.
Ranger, vimfs and nnn all seem great. If I was coming at this problem fresh I'd definitely give them all a solid look, but I'm so ingrained on mc now I don't really see the point in swapping.
@@tech_craft I agree. I find mc absolutely amazing to use. Easy navigation and not to mention really really good mouse support (if you need that). However, I wish it was a little bit more vim-like when it comes to bindings, or an easy way to change a lot of the keys to be more vim-centric.
Anyone remember Norton Commander (NC) for DOS?
Has anyone use Total commander on windows? I’m wondering how this compares to that. I’ve been using Total commander for 20 years thanks.
"same on every computer"
Not. eg.. I open MC, start typing and nothing happens. I hit enter while on a txt file, again nothing happens.
And on and on like that.
MC behavior is also very different from GUI terminal vs TTY terminal.
You have to enable type to search, it’s not on by default.
is this package available for AlmaLinux 8 ?
I believe it's the `mc` package on the RHEL/CentoOS-based distros.
I swear there was a DOS version of MC back in the 1980s 🤔🤔🤔
Norton Commander was on DOS in the 80s for sure. MC is a clone of that.
How about ranger-fm or NNN?
Both great choices. I’ve been using mc for so long now I don’t think it’s worth switching, but good options for anybody coming at the terminal file manager space with fresh eyes.
@@tech_craft hope you can make a video about these two cli filemanager
I only use Ranger because it can be used as a file picker for Qutebrowser. LF is better, but I mostly use cli (zsh with plugins).
I'm using both. Main one ranger; second nnn. Both are great, but you can see mc is also great. Each one is great, find your niche and run with it.
Is there a reason to switch to Kitty from iTerm2?
If you work multi-platform then Kitty is Mac, Linux and Windows. If not and you’re happy and well setup with iterm2 there’s not much reason to switch. Kitty is definitely faster, it has more sensible keybindings out of the box and it looks nicer when customised.
@@tech_craft Thank you! Btw, this video finally conquered my heart. A lot of newcomers try to use modern console FM, or even learn zsh-fu. As for myself, I never stopped using mc, even on Windows. And now I realized there's something to learn to use it better.
Anyone under forty?
Me
22 here
The fuck would make you want to comment that here?
Me, 16 here
18
Norton Commander like file managers are insanley cool. But there's a caveat in Far Manager. It's edit mode doesn't support Unicode as a saving option. Especially bad for Japanese, or Chinese users.
Do you have Recent files there and Favorites?
Favourites (hotlist in mc) is Ctrl-\
Recent (history in mc) is Alt-Shift-H
@@tech_craft Niiice ) Thank you, Sir. Two panels file manager is a charming thing with no doubts
How to copy file between drivers? this is not in this video :(
You can do this by opening one drive in the left panel, the other in the right panel and then use the standard copy options.
Getting into the drives will require you to know the mount point on your computer. This under /Volumes on Mac.
@@tech_craft I dont know why this is so complicated, drive letter form MS-DOS is better much more (i try copy HW server with 5HDD drives to virtual machine this is so complicated... :(
Can you get this on ish
On ish
Some additional history.... Norton Commander was a clone of "Total Commander" from earlier in the that decade (initial name was Windows Commander) which was and still is an excellent application for Windows and better than Norton Commander IMHO. I have used Total Commander since version 1.0 and used MC also since its first release. On MacOS there is "One Commander", as well but it is limited. But I am a big fan of these apps, especially MC on macOS/Linux. Great video BTW 👍
Total Commander is my favourite Windows app of all time. Such a great piece of software.
I used Total Commander also from version 1.0. My original license from back then is still valid! I don't use Windows anymore, but it is the first program I install when I have to look at a Windows machine for a friend. For the history, it was the other way round. Total Commander (WIndows Commander) was a clone of Norton Commander.
It's the other way around. TC is a clone of nc.
@@N0zer0 Before NC existed TC was "Windows Commander" and the author renamed it because he was concerned MS would come after him. But it was around a few years before NC.
@@ajimenez251 Norton Commander was an MS-DOS app long before Windows Commander.
Is this really more convenient than finder?
Significantly. Finder is really not a great a file manager experience.
@@tech_craft OK, I just got my hands on a M1 pro MacBook from work. I will give this a go :)
Any tips on how to make it work on the standard Mac terminal?
these days I just use emacs dired
I cannot install MC.
What’s the error message.
nice . in 2022 you use a file explorer from the 80s