9 ms·
Show HN: Marta – A fast and minimalistic file manager for macOS
- smarx007 10y agoWanted to try it, but no, I am not going to sign up for a super exclusive alpha that requires my email address.
- yanex 10y agoWell, it's your decision. By the way, if you ping me on Twitter (yanex_ru), I can send you the direct link to DMG via a DM.
- mmjaa 10y agoGoing to try to get it into Home-brew?
- yanex 10y agoHomebrew is not suited well for DMG package distribution (well, at least I don't know examples of such software). But you can install Marta just as any another macOS GUI software.
- mmjaa 10y agoHomebrew has the Caskroom, which would work: https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-cask https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-cask EDIT: details on how to add your own Cask for an app: https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-cask/blob/master/doc/development/adding_a_cask.md https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-cask/blob/master/doc/de...
- yanex 10y agoThank you! I'll investigate it.
- smarx007 10y agoWell, I just read about powers of VK moderators on Habr and got more convinced that I need Little Snitch or something similar for my desktop apps for sure. Just if it was not clear: my email is public on many services. I just think that if you require my email to get the installer, how much logging/tracking code will you run once you're on my machine?
- yanex 10y agoI'm not affiliated with VK moderators in any manner. It's their own business. I know it's all about trust, but Marta doesn't have any tracking code, and never will. Trust is much more important that any statistics.
- _joel 10y agoAgreed, this complete puts me off too. Was initially interested but that evaporates with having to register.
- yanex 10y agoI could send you the direct link via Twitter DMs (yanex_ru) or via an email (me@yanex[at]org).
- balladeer 10y agoThat will again require a Twitter handle or Email. It's the same with me. If I am using a really early stage app and actually helping with testing it the last thing I would want to do is to pretty much sign up for it with my email unless I desperately need that app.
- aphextron 10y ago>I could send you the direct link via Twitter DMs (yanex_ru) or via an email (me@yanex[at]org). You need to freely provide the download. No one is going to give you their email address to download what should be an open source project.
- pvg 10y agoI get the email thing but "should be an open source project"?
- yanex 10y agoClosed alpha allows me to fix the critical bugs until Marta will be available freely. It's not about a subscription to some shitty weekly newspaper. I already got the valuable feedback from alpha users. But I completely understand you. I hope Marta will be available for everyone quite soon (maybe at the time of 0.2).
- Exuma 10y agohttps://www.guerrillamail.com/ https://www.guerrillamail.com/
- lm2s 10y agoSo... You're trusting it with all your filesystem but not your email?
- andreareina 10y agoI trust that the program I download right now won't do anything malicious with my files. I don't trust that the organization, or whoever it gets sold to in the future, won't try to monetize my email address, from now until forever.
- smarx007 10y agoNo, that's actually an indicator. If the DMG is email-walled, how much data the app will track once installed on my machine?
- yanex 10y agoTo be honest, the initial launch of Marta was an important lesson for me. I started with a closed alpha so I could fix the critical bugs until it will become open for everyone – not because I want everyone's emails to send some shitty spam. But lots of people disagreed with me, and I understand them. I changed some of my plans. Marta will become open much earlier, maybe even the next week. Sorry for the inconvenience.
- smarx007 10y agoThank you for a reply and best wishes to your project!
- laurent123456 10y agoShould "minimalistic" be a goal for a file manager though? Total Commander is great because it's not minimalistic and allows the user to customise it in any way you want. I think that's what users who want more than just Finder or Explorer are looking for. It's the same for text editors, nobody would use a minimalistic one, or they'd just use Notepad.
- yanex 10y agoI call it minimalistic just because the UI is not cluttered by numerous panels and menus. It's not about the functionality. I believe that the functionality/simplicity balance is possible, as I see it done well in Sublime Text. By the way, Marta supports plugins so the functionality is not limited by what you have out of the box.
- athenot 10y ago> I call it minimalistic just because the UI is not cluttered by numerous panels and menus. And yet it does just that with all the buttons and UI items that visually blend in each other. Constrast to the Finder: - View > As Columns (this is a legacy from NeXT Step that I still love 17 years after first seeing it, and use it daily). - View > Hide Sidebar - View > Hide Status bar There: you have a minimalist and fast view of the FS, with zero UI clutter, and 100% browseable with the keyboard.
- holydude 10y agoStack? Native ?
- jmuguy 10y agoThis is eerily similar to fman, which was posted here a few weeks ago https://fman.io/ https://fman.io/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13764060 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13764060
- yanex 10y agofman is a cross-platform application made with PyQt. I doubt if it will achieve the native macOS experience someday. And I think the difference is really important.
- zerr 10y agoAnd your project is done with Cocoa/Obj-C/Swift?
- yanex 10y agoYes, it's Cocoa/Swift.
- mherrmann 10y agofman author here. Congrats on the launch. Sublime Text is cross-platform and is great on macOS. I don't see why fman shouldn't be. I would say people who truly care about 100% macOS may choose Marta, people who care about cross-platform and a Python-based plugin API will choose fman.
- mherrmann 10y agoActually Yan, I remember you signing up for fman's closed alpha! Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery I guess :)
- yanex 10y agoThe development of Marta started the long before I knew about fman, so it's not any kind of imitation. Actually, in the beginning, I also thought about making the cross-platform file manager, but I quickly realized that the approach with the existing GUI libraries just won't work (and still think so). I tried the closed alpha of fman (and also the number of other file managers) because of curiosity. I naively hoped that someone has already done what I need. ;)
- pvinis 10y agoWhat was the motivation for this?
- needz 10y agoI don't know if this is truly faster, but Finder can really crawl for me sometimes. I'd gladly switch to a faster solution.
- mmjaa 10y agoNot a fan of the Midnight Commander-style of UI, but I'll give it a try since anything has got to be better than the mess that is the Finder these days .. I still don't understand why Apple can't push Finder to be a more modern interface for the system without completely screwing it up .. so much to improve, but yet they are ignoring it in favour of sandboxes and "nobody knows what a filesystem is" policies that make us all dumber. One of my pet peeves with the Finder is that it still can't auto-layout the content to fit in the window - take a list view, open a folder .. and marvel at the fact that its the 21st century, but yet this list view still isn't capable of rendering itself for minimal-fit constraints. (I have to do it manually.) This is very frustrating, and I'd love to know of a solution ..
- coldtea 10y ago>Not a fan of the Midnight Commander-style of UI, but I'll give it a try since anything has got to be better than the mess that is the Finder these days What exactly got worse in the Finder "these days"? I don't see anything that changed for the worse since OS X 10.2 If anything, current Finder is much improved in most aspects. >One of my pet peeves with the Finder is that it still can't auto-layout the content to fit in the window - take a list view, open a folder .. and marvel at the fact that its the 21st century, but yet this list view still isn't capable of rendering itself for minimal-fit constraints. Not sure what you mean, since the list view seems to work just fine.
- mmjaa 10y agoOpen a Finder window with some files in it. Hit list view (Cmd-2) ... notice that the text labels do not expand to fit/fill the text contents they contain - you have to do this manually by stretching the window, aligning the list columns manually, etc. This really should be laying itself out automatically - like if you hit Ctrl-Alt-Numpad+ on an Explorer window on a Windows machine, which has had the ability to present the view in a useful, readable auto-layout .. since 1995.
- coldtea 10y ago>Open a Finder window with some files in it. Hit list view (Cmd-2) ... notice that the text labels do not expand to fit/fill the text contents they contain Why should they? I don't want the column sizes to change under me, I want them to stay as they were left. Some text labels (filename, other meta etc) could be too large to display anyway. That said, you can double click the right divider on any column to have it expand to fit the largest of its contents.
- pavlov 10y agoA tiny niggle: consider using the Apple-defined system font instead of Helvetica? Many Mac users are sticklers about this.
- yanex 10y agoThis is a completely valid point, thank you. I added it to the public TODO list: https://quip.com/TOH6Abh8ruxi https://quip.com/TOH6Abh8ruxi. By the way, you can already change the font (https://marta.yanex.org/docs#fonts https://marta.yanex.org/docs#fonts).
- dorian-graph 10y agoI'd recommend putting some more details on the homepage, or at least linking to the introductory blog post which has pertinent information like your plans about pricing (for everyone else, it will be paid). Maybe even list some of the other features like plugins would help sell it too.
- yanex 10y agoAdded the blog post link to the index page. Thank you for the suggestion!
- mariusmg 10y agoPretty interesting that the default file manager sucks soo much on both Windows and OSX (and Linux depending on the distro i guess).
- erelde 10y agoOn Linux you can use virtually any file manager without anyone/anything "preventing" you from it.
- mariusmg 10y agoYeah, "default" is a hard word to understand.
- RaleyField 10y agoTime prevents me. I still prefer the way Windows Explorer works with it's folder tree sidebar, and yet all equivalents on Linux cut it or have other major flaws to eliminate them from consideration.
- hooksfordays 10y agoI'm very interested in getting started with this! One question, is there a way to change the key binding for switching active panes? Right now it seems like the only option is to use Tab and is the only key binding that doesn't appear to be configurable.
- yanex 10y agoSorry, it's not possible right now. But I've added a task to the TODO list (https://quip.com/TOH6Abh8ruxi https://quip.com/TOH6Abh8ruxi), and it will be fixed in Marta 0.1.1.
- jrcii 10y agoI prefer TotalFinder
- weitzj 10y agoNice. mc keybindings
- husted 10y agoLooks like a good start. I would love to get a full replacement of TotalCommander for macOS. I've tried a few and I'm currently using Forklift 3. There's still some features that I'm missing in Forklift so I'll keep an eye on this project.
- pax 10y agoDisk Order (http://likemac.ru http://likemac.ru) was great, now abandonware (last updated 2013) Next best thing I could find was Path Finder (http://cocoatech.com http://cocoatech.com)
- husted 10y agoI've also used http://www.mucommander.com/ http://www.mucommander.com/ for a while, I haven't kept track so I'm not sure about the current status.
- finchisko 10y agoyes mucommander, it could open websites too. it literally parsed html and showed you list of included resources in the panel. how cool is that? :-) which commander has that?
- ghaff 10y agoPath Finder is pretty good. I'm still not sure I exactly love it though I should maybe take the time to customize it one of these days. You end up back in Apple's Finder in program dialog boxes in any case. Way back when, I sold a shareware file manager for DOS. I think the program was something like 32KB. :-) Times have changed.
- mherrmann 10y agoI recently launched fman [1] here as well. Maybe you'd like to check it out. [1]: https://fman.io https://fman.io
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- yellowboxtenant 10y agoJust an FYI I wouldn't have realized the Mad Mimi subscription confirmation email was related until I tried another email address and saw the same message.
- xmichael99 10y agoNot really alpha ready in my opinion. Needs quite a bit of work to be able to do anything.
- yanex 10y agoYou're right: it's the first preview version, not the complete product yet. Please stay tuned :) But if you have some specific problems with Marta, you can always contact me at mail@yanex[dot]org, or leave the TODO request here: https://quip.com/TOH6Abh8ruxi https://quip.com/TOH6Abh8ruxi.
- dyeje 10y agoConsider doing an animation like the Sublime Text website: https://www.sublimetext.com/ https://www.sublimetext.com/ Would make the homepage more engaging and demonstrate value quicker.
- yanex 10y agoYes, of course, I'm planning to add the animation a bit later. Thank you for the suggestion!
- vbezhenar 10y agoThere's similar program: Nimble Commander, I use it for a long time and I like it.
- pax 10y agoThank you, I gave it a try and so far I like it better than Path Finder (which I've been using for last couple of years). Nimble wins for minimalistic UI.
- nicoburns 10y agoJust want to point people to http://www.binarynights.com/forklift/ http://www.binarynights.com/forklift/ It's not free, but they've just releaseed a new major version, and it's the first time I've found a file manager I'm happy with on Mac.
- yanex 10y agoActually, I used ForkLift for some time. But ForkLift lacks configurability, and the new version is somehow slow. I didn't like that.
- fareesh 10y agoIt looks interesting from the docs but on an average day I would have closed the page without going to the docs section. Some sort of video or animation to boast why it will help me reclaim productivity is all I need to press download and start using it.
- gcb0 10y ago> give money to a company with crappy software > spend your time fixing their problems so they can continue making money with crapy software someone needs some Stallman love
- mattlevan 10y agoThis product doesn't look to me to be compelling enough to switch away from Finder and ranger. I use Finder when I want to browse pictures or other rich media and ranger when I just want to browse source code and other text files from the command line using vim-like hotkeys.
- saberworks 10y agoI think GUI tools like this should use every opportunity to gently introduce users to the conventions used in lower-level tools that they may eventually decide to use. For example, in the top of each pane in the screenshot there is a directory open with a path listed. Perhaps show it with typical path separators (/) so the user gets used to it.
- yanex 10y agoBy default, Marta shows file icons that identify directories pretty well. You are free to disable the icons and specify `directoryPrefix` and `directorySuffix` in conf.json. But it would be an interesting idea to make a "set up wizard" that will suggest users disable the icons.
- RileyKyeden 10y agoAny relation to the mass transit system in Atlanta?
- balladeer 10y agoI really like XtraFinder[1] and pretty much can't do without it. I wish it worked w/o that very serious (potentially dangerous) workaround but sadly it doesn't and after OSX upgrade broke it it is not as stable it used to be. Where does Marta fit in among file managers (esp very serious ones) and Finder plugins for OSX? Are other features (for e.g. FTP or so? Though it says minimal) are planned or already exist? [1] https://www.trankynam.com/xtrafinder/ https://www.trankynam.com/xtrafinder/
- floSchr 10y agoGod I wish it was open source and the dev didn't suddenly disappear :(
- saiya-jin 10y agomain reason for Linux to not be my desktop choice is lack of Total commander equivalent in terms of productivity. much better and more experienced backend/linux developers starring at me in awe how quickly I can do a lot of tasks. "bbut-but I thought explorer was what everybody was using on windows". "wow you can be fast. I wish we had something like that natively". Every time I see a much more senior colleague working with explorer windows, he takes 10-20x more time to do same simple tasks. I love power of pipes and sed, but this can only take you so far. I can easily edit files in archives directly, synchronize folders, have by far best text file comparison I've ever seen, ditto multi-renaming of files, connect to sFTP. tabs on both sides are amazing once you are working on more complex tasks. embedded file viewer is very handy when facing file encoding issues. and so on and on, and on and on. not even going into plugins. I use it primarily even at home. Concept of 2 panels is just so intuitive and works greatly once you get used to it (have an advantage here, used it since norton commander for DOS). tested few linux alternatives and they leave so much to be desired. linux desktop will never be a thing for me unless this is fixed.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- DoodleBuggy 10y agoMight be more useful for iOS
- diggan 10y ago> If your work isn't ready for people to try out yet, please don't do a Show HN. Once it's ready, come back and do it then. From https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html which I feel is applicable here, since it's invite only alpha.
- yanex 10y agoWell, I was thinking about this. And I actually don't know how to interpret this sentence because there are lots of projects that are announced but don't have anything to show at all. Marta has – but the difference is that it doesn't provide the direct link.
- diggan 10y agoWell, I think it's fair for projects to submit links when announcing something but if it's under "Show HN" it actually has to be something that people can try. Putting the "trying" being a closed wall I don't think is very fair.