Orchard Commander

Chapter 01

Getting started

System requirements

System Requirements
macOS macOS 12 Monterey or later, Apple silicon (M1 or newer)
Windows Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
Linux x86-64, glibc 2.35 or later (for example Ubuntu 22.04, Fedora 36, Debian 12), X11 or Wayland, a Vulkan or OpenGL (EGL) graphics driver such as Mesa

The window is drawn on the GPU: with Metal on macOS, Direct3D 12 or Vulkan on Windows, and Vulkan or OpenGL on Linux. Without a usable GPU, for example in a virtual machine, the app draws in software instead.

Downloads are available from the Orchard Commander website and from the releases page of the GitHub repository.

Installing

macOS

With Homebrew:

shell
brew install --cask sandboxly/tap/orchard-commander

With the disk image:

  1. Open Orchard-Commander-macOS.dmg.
  2. Drag Orchard Commander onto the Applications folder in the window that opens.
  3. Eject the disk image.
  4. Start Orchard Commander from the Applications folder or Launchpad.

The app is signed and notarized, so macOS opens it without a warning.

Windows

  1. Run Orchard-Commander-Setup.exe.
  2. Choose whether to install for yourself only or for all users of the computer. Installing for all users requires administrator rights.
  3. Follow the steps of the installer. You can add a desktop shortcut on the Select Additional Tasks page.

The installer adds Orchard Commander to the Start menu and to Settings > Apps, where you can uninstall it.

Windows SmartScreen may show "Windows protected your PC" when you run the installer. Click More info, then Run anyway.

To use Orchard Commander without installing it, extract Orchard-Commander-Windows.zip to a folder of your choice and run orchard-commander.exe in the extracted orchard-commander folder.

Linux

Distribution File Install with
Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint Orchard-Commander-Linux-x86_64.deb sudo apt install ./Orchard-Commander-Linux-x86_64.deb
Fedora, RHEL, openSUSE Orchard-Commander-Linux-x86_64.rpm sudo dnf install ./Orchard-Commander-Linux-x86_64.rpm (openSUSE: sudo zypper install)
Any distribution Orchard-Commander-Linux-x86_64.AppImage Make the file executable (chmod +x) and run it
Any distribution Orchard-Commander-Linux.tar.gz Extract it and run ./orchard-commander in the orchard-commander folder
Omarchy, Arch Linux install script See below

The .deb and .rpm packages install the app to /opt/orchard-commander, add the orchard-commander command and a menu entry, and install the libraries the app needs. Uninstall them with your package manager.

The AppImage needs FUSE. Without it, run the AppImage with --appimage-extract-and-run.

Omarchy and Arch Linux

One command installs the app for your user, adds a menu entry to the launcher (Super+Space) and installs missing libraries with pacman (it asks for your password for that):

shell
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sandboxly/orchard-commander/main/packaging/omarchy/install.sh | bash

The app goes to ~/.local/opt/orchard-commander, and the orchard-commander command to ~/.local/bin. Run the command again to update. To pass options, add -s -- after bash, for example bash -s -- --bind --default:

Option What it does
--bind Super+Ctrl+Shift+F opens Orchard Commander, or focuses it if it's open
--default Folders open in Orchard Commander instead of the default file manager
--free-f9 Frees F9 for the menu strip (Omarchy uses it for dictation)
--version 2.1.0 Installs that release instead of the latest
--uninstall Removes the app, the menu entry and the changes the options made. Your settings stay in ~/.config/orchard-commander

--bind and --free-f9 add a marked line each to ~/.config/hypr/bindings.lua; --uninstall removes them again.

The main window

The window is divided into two sides, left and right. Each side has two tabs at the top:

Each panel lists folders first, then files, with their size and modification date. The panel's title shows the current folder; the line at the bottom shows the number of folders and files, the free space, and, when you have marked files, how many are marked and their total size.

Below the two sides is the function-key bar. Click a key in the bar or press the key itself:

Key Command
F3 Preview
F4 Edit
F5 Copy
F6 Move
F7 Make directory
F8 Move to trash
F9 Menu
F10 Quit

The right end of the bar shows the shortcuts for connecting to a server and for the command palette.

The menu bar

The menus are Left, Files, Commands, Options and Right. Left and Right contain commands for that side, such as switching between Files and Preview and choosing a drive.

On macOS, the menus are in the macOS menu bar at the top of the screen. On all systems you can also show them inside the window: press F9, which opens the menu of the side you are working in. To keep the menu bar visible in the window, turn on Always show the menu bar in Settings (see Settings).

The active panel

The panel with the highlighted frame is the active panel. File commands such as Copy and Move act on the active panel and use the other panel as the destination.

When the active side shows the Preview view, file commands act on the panel on the other side, which is the one you are previewing from.

The command palette

The command palette lists every command with its shortcut. Use it to find a command without knowing where it is in the menus.

  1. Press ⌘P / Ctrl+P.
  2. Type part of the command name.
  3. Select the command with the arrow keys and press Enter.

Notifications

Short messages, such as "Copying finished" or an error, appear briefly at the bottom right of the window. They don't require any action.

Where to go next