Walk is an MIT-licensed terminal file manager written in Go that replaces the familiar pairing of cd and ls with an interactive navigator, aimed at developers and other command-line users who want to move through the filesystem with arrow keys or hjkl instead of typing paths.

What it is

Walk describes itself as a terminal navigator and a cd and ls replacement. It is a command-line program, invoked as walk from the shell, that shows the contents of the current directory and lets the user move through the tree with the arrow keys or hjkl, descending with enter and going back up with backspace. It lives in the CLI ecosystem alongside other terminal utilities, and it is written in Go, which is why go install github.com/antonmedv/walk@latest is one of its documented installation routes. The project is MIT licensed and developed in the open on GitHub, with a topic list of cli, file-manager, and terminal.

The concrete problem it solves is the grind of positional navigation in a shell. Rather than running ls to see what is in a directory, running cd into it, and repeating, the user browses visually and then decides what should happen to the shell itself. Pressing esc or q exits and hands the chosen location back so the shell can change into it, while ctrl+c exits without changing anything. That exit-with-a-path behaviour is what makes it a replacement for two commands rather than just another viewer, and it is wired up through a small shell function named lk.

Key capabilities

• Interactive navigation with the arrow keys or hjkl, shift plus arrows to jump to the start or end of a listing, enter to enter a directory and backspace to leave it.
• Preview mode, toggled with space or started automatically with the --preview flag, optionally framed using --with-border.
• Image preview, which the README states requires no additional setup.
• Deletion from inside the navigator with dd and an undo with u, with the removal command overridable through WALK_REMOVE_CMD — for example, trash.
• Fuzzy search bound to /, or enabled at launch with the --fuzzy flag.
• File-type-aware opening through WALK_OPEN_WITH, for example txt:less -N;go:vim;md:glow -p, alongside EDITOR or WALK_EDITOR for the default handler.
• Display and appearance flags including --icons for Nerd Fonts, --dir-only, and --hide-hidden, with WALK_MAIN_COLOR and WALK_STATUS_BAR for colour and status bar customisation.

Who uses it and how

• Shell users add a small wrapper function to .bashrc or an equivalent config file, with documented variants for Bash/Zsh, Fish and PowerShell, so that lk runs walk and cds into whatever directory is selected on exit.
• macOS users install it through Homebrew with brew install walk, and BSD users through the system package tool with pkg_add walk.
• Go developers install directly from source with go install github.com/antonmedv/walk@latest, while others use the provided curl install script or download prebuilt release binaries.
• Users who want per-extension behaviour, such as opening Markdown in glow -p or Go files in vim, configure WALK_OPEN_WITH rather than accepting the editor default.
• Users who prefer recoverable deletes point WALK_REMOVE_CMD at a command such as trash instead of the default rm.

Getting started

Install with brew install walk, pkg_add walk, go install github.com/antonmedv/walk@latest, the project's curl install script, or a prebuilt binary from the releases page, then add the lk shell function from the README to your shell configuration and run lk.

How it compares

The facts provided do not name any paid products that Walk replaces, and the related projects listed — fx, a terminal JSON viewer; howto, a terminal command LLM helper; and countdown, a terminal countdown timer — are sibling terminal utilities rather than alternative file managers. On the evidence available it stands alone in this registry as a terminal file manager, so the meaningful comparison is with the cd and ls commands it is explicitly built to replace.

When to use it — and when not to

Walk is a client-side terminal program, so there is no database, storage layer or mail service for a self-hoster to operate; installation is by package manager, the Go toolchain, an install script or a prebuilt binary. The main setup requirement is the shell wrapper, since without the lk function the exit-and-cd behaviour has nowhere to go, and the icon feature additionally requires Nerd Fonts to be installed. Anyone who needs scriptable bulk file operations, a graphical file manager, or a tool that works without touching shell configuration should look elsewhere; the documented install paths also cover Homebrew, pkg_add, the Go toolchain, a shell script and prebuilt binaries, with no Windows package-manager command listed.

brew install walk

pkg_add walk

go install github.com/antonmedv/walk@latest

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/antonmedv/walk/master/install.sh | sh

function lk {
  cd "$(walk "$@")"
}

function lk
  set loc (walk $argv); and cd $loc;
end

function lk() {
  cd $(walk $args)
}

export EDITOR=vim

export WALK_OPEN_WITH="txt:less -N;go:vim;md:glow -p"

export WALK_REMOVE_CMD=trash

export WALK_MAIN_COLOR="#0000FF"

export WALK_STATUS_BAR="Size() + ' ' + Mode()"