Wayfile is a comprehensive overhaul of HyprFM by Soyeb Pervez Jim. Built on HyprFM's foundations, the 1.0.0 release reworks the project from the ground up: an entirely new visual layer — thin-frame type-coloured icons, glowing tabs, a unified Places sidebar, a compass-folder logo, an Inter · Cormorant · JetBrains Mono type stack, and five live accent presets — plus a hybrid default view, merged tabs, network locations, and a token-driven theme system. Wayfile wouldn't exist without HyprFM — all credit for the original file manager goes to Soyeb Pervez Jim.

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Wayfile is a Qt6/QML file manager built to feel native on Wayland: lightweight, fast, and unapologetically keyboard-driven. Its signature look is Bifröst — a deep obsidian surface with a warm gate-glow gold accent — and its default layout is the hybrid view: a folder grid stacked over a sortable file list with one shared selection. Underneath the polish sit the features power users actually reach for: Miller columns, split panes, merged tabs, async file operations, rich previews, git status, and a live theme system with five accent presets.

The default hybrid view — a folder grid over a sortable file list, the unified Places sidebar with a live disk meter, and the obsidian + gold Bifröst skin.

The whole UI retints, live

Bifröst ships with five accent presets. Pick one in Settings → Colours and the entire interface — folders, tabs, sidebar, breadcrumb, meters — recolours instantly, while file-type colours stay fixed so files remain recognisable.

Bifröst · Aurora · Nebula · Ember · Verdant — obsidian base, one accent swap.

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✨ Features

Views

• Hybrid (default) — a folder grid stacked over a sortable file list, with one unified selection across both halves; the file list sorts independently.
• Grid (Ctrl+1) — Ctrl+Scroll to zoom; the icon size stays constant while columns reflow to fill the width.
• Detailed (Ctrl+3) — sortable Name · Modified · Type · Size columns, folder item counts, image/video thumbnails.
• Miller columns (Ctrl+2) — parent · current · live preview, with a metadata panel for the focused item.
• Quick preview (Space) — a full-screen overlay for images, video, PDFs, and text with a rich metadata sidebar; ←/→ browse neighbours.
• Split panes / merged tabs (F3) — up to four directories side by side, each with its own path strip and item count.

Grid view — thin-frame, type-coloured file glyphs (PDF, code, archive, config…), gold folders, and inline image/video thumbnails.

Miller columns with a live preview column and a per-item metadata panel.

Switching between grid, detailed, and Miller columns.

Navigation & input

• Full keyboard navigation — arrows, history, type-ahead jump-to-file
• Tabs with independent per-pane history; merge tabs into a split "supertab" (the merge button joins the active tab with its right-hand neighbour, badged ×N)
• Breadcrumb path bar with inline editing (Ctrl+L) and suggestions
• Unified sidebar — Favorites with per-bookmark colour tags, an expandable Places tree of your XDG folders, mounted devices with live capacity meters, network locations, and Trash; collapsible to a compact icon rail
• Kinetic wheel scrolling with momentum and rubber-band overscroll
• Rubber-band selection; contiguous selections render as one rounded gold outline

Two tabs merged into a split "supertab" — each pane keeps its own path and the tab is badged ×2.

File operations

• Async copy / move via rsync and gio with live progress, speed, ETA, and pause
• Drag & drop between panes, tabs, and external apps (Wayland-native)
• Trash with restore (XDG-compliant) · Bulk rename with regex find/replace
• Compress / extract archives · Open With from .desktop entries · Undo / redo

Quick preview (Space) — image preview with a full metadata sidebar; ←/→ step through neighbours.

Look & feel

• Bifröst, the signature obsidian + gold theme, plus four more live accent presets — Aurora (teal), Nebula (violet), Ember (coral), and Verdant (green)
• Colours settings page — pick a preset and the whole UI retints live, fine-tune any palette token (swatch + hex), and save your own palette as a named theme; a contrast warning flags an accent that's too dark against the background
• TOML themes with live reload — drop a file in themes/, pick it in Settings, no restart
• Thin-frame SVG icon set — type-coloured file glyphs and accent-coloured folders, rendered via Qt Shapes, with a soft gold bloom on hover and selection
• Type stack — Inter (UI), Cormorant Garamond (display), and JetBrains Mono (mono), all bundled
• Configurable corner radius, fonts, animation timing, and transparency
• Compositor blur on supporting Wayland compositors, plus native KWin blur on KDE Plasma

The Settings panel — fonts, icon pack, transparency, corner radii, and the live Colours picker.

Integrations

• udisks2 mount/unmount of removable drives · gvfs / gio for SFTP, SMB, MTP, trash
• Git status overlays in every view (modified, staged, untracked, …)
• wl-clipboard clipboard · bat syntax highlighting · ffmpeg video posters · Poppler PDF previews

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📦 Installation

Arch Linux (AUR)

yay -S wayfile-git

The PKGBUILD clones the latest main, builds with Ninja, and installs to /usr/bin/wayfile.

Build from source

git clone --recursive https://github.com/blackbartblues/Wayfile.git
cd Wayfile
cmake -B build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DBUILD_TESTS=OFF
cmake --build build --parallel
./build/src/wayfile

Note: --recursive pulls the quill-icons icon submodule. (The Quill control library is vendored directly in src/qml/Quill/, so it is not a submodule.)

Dependencies

	Packages
Required (build)	cmake, ninja, qt6-base, qt6-declarative, qt6-svg
Required (runtime)	qt6-base, qt6-declarative, qt6-svg, qt6-multimedia, qt6-wayland, glib2, fd, rsync, xdg-utils
Optional	kwindowsystem (native KDE blur), wl-clipboard (clipboard), bat (syntax highlighting), gvfs / gvfs-smb (remote filesystems), ffmpeg (video thumbnails), udisks2 (device mounting), poppler-qt6 (PDF previews)

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⌨️ Keyboard shortcuts

Navigation

Shortcut	Action
Return / Double-click	Open file or directory
Backspace / Alt+Up	Parent directory
Alt+Left / Alt+Right	Back / Forward in history
Ctrl+L	Focus path bar
Ctrl+F	Search
Type any letter	Type-ahead jump to file

Views

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+1	Grid view
Ctrl+2	Miller column view
Ctrl+3	Detailed view
Ctrl+Scroll	Zoom
Space	Quick preview
F3	Merge / split panes
F9	Toggle sidebar
Ctrl+H	Toggle hidden files

The hybrid view is the default and is reachable from the view switcher in the status bar.

Tabs

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+T / Ctrl+W	New / Close tab
Ctrl+Shift+T	Reopen closed tab
Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab	Cycle tabs

File operations

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+C / Ctrl+X / Ctrl+V	Copy / Cut / Paste
Ctrl+A	Select all
Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z	Undo / Redo
F2	Rename
Delete / Shift+Delete	Trash / Permanent delete
Ctrl+Shift+N / Ctrl+N	New folder / New file
Ctrl+,	Open Settings

All shortcuts can be remapped in ~/.config/wayfile/config.toml under [shortcuts].

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⚙️ Configuration

Config lives at ~/.config/wayfile/config.toml, created with sensible defaults on first run.

[general]
theme = "bifrost"              # filename in themes/ without .toml
icon_theme = "Adwaita"         # system icon theme fallback
builtin_icons = true           # use the bundled SVG icons
default_view = "hybrid"        # hybrid | grid | detailed | miller
show_hidden = false
sort_by = "name"               # name | size | modified | type
sort_ascending = true
grid_cell_size = 150           # grid zoom (110–320), persisted across restarts

[appearance]
radius_small = 4
radius_medium = 6
radius_large = 10
transparency_enabled = true
transparency_level = 0.5       # 0 = fully transparent, 1 = opaque
animations_enabled = true

[sidebar]
position = "left"
width = 270
visible = true
compact = false                # collapse to a 56px icon rail
hidden_entries = ["places.recents"]   # sidebar rows hidden via right-click

[bookmarks]
paths = ["~/Documents", "~/Downloads", "~/Pictures", "~/Projects"]

[shortcuts]
# Override any shortcut, e.g.:
# rename      = "F2"
# miller_view = "Ctrl+2"

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🎨 Theming

Wayfile is built on a shared obsidian base plus a single accent. The five shipped presets — Bifröst, Aurora, Nebula, Ember, and Verdant — each change just one value, the accent; the gold/accent ramp, glows, and chrome tints are derived from it live, so the whole UI retints from one colour. File-type and git-status colours are deliberately fixed so files stay recognisable across themes.

A theme is a TOML file with a [colors] table. The minimal form is a single accent:

# themes/aurora.toml — a preset is a one-line accent swap on the obsidian base
[colors]
accent = "#57C7BF"

You can override more of the palette in the same table if you want a fuller re-skin:

[colors]
base = "#1E2126"; mantle = "#15181C"; crust = "#0D0F13"; surface = "#25292E"
text = "#ECE7DC"; subtext = "#9CA0A8"; muted = "#787E85"
accent = "#D4AA6A"; success = "#84C98A"; warning = "#E68B5C"; error = "#C97070"

Don't want to hand-edit TOML? The Settings → Colours page has a swatch picker for the five presets that applies live, plus token-by-token editing (swatch + hex field) and a Save action that writes your palette to ~/.config/wayfile/themes/<name>.toml as a new selectable theme. A live warning flags an accent that's too low-contrast against the background. Drop any TOML file into themes/ (or your config folder) and it shows up in the picker — no restart.

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🧱 Architecture

Wayfile is a three-layer Qt6 application:

• QML frontend (src/qml/) — all rendering. Main.qml wires tab state, selection, and shortcuts. FileViewContainer switches between HybridView, FileGridView, FileDetailedView, and FileMillerView. Theme tokens come from the Theme / Fonts / FileTypeColors / GitColors QML singletons; the vendored Quill library (in src/qml/Quill/) provides themed controls, bridged onto Wayfile's tokens in Main.qml.
• C++ backend (src/models/, src/services/, src/providers/) — QAbstractListModel subclasses for files, tabs, bookmarks, devices, and network locations; async services for config, theming, clipboard, file operations, search, disk usage, and previews. ThemeLoader parses the active TOML into the live Theme singleton, deriving the accent ramp. Exposed to QML via setContextProperty.
• System layer — rsync / gio via QProcess, UDisks2 over DBus, wl-copy for the clipboard.

See CLAUDE.md for the full architecture notes.

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🤝 Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome. A few notes:

• Run the tests with ctest --test-dir build after changes (Qt6::Test).
• Match the existing 4-space-indent style for QML and C++.
• Initialise submodules after pulling: git submodule update --init --recursive.

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📜 License & credits

MIT. Wayfile is a fork maintained by blackbartblues, building on the original HyprFM by Soyeb Pervez Jim.

Built with Qt 6 · UI icons from Lucide · file-type & folder icons from Material Icon Theme (MIT) · type by Inter (OFL), Cormorant Garamond (OFL) & JetBrains Mono (OFL) · inspired by macOS Finder, Nautilus, and Dolphin.