The file browser is a Name/Size/Date listing to the right of
the terminal. It works for local and SSH sessions and follows your
shell around as you cd.
Toggle it with the Files toolbar button or View > File Browser (⌥⌘F) — it’s on by default. Drag the divider between terminal and pane to resize it; the width is remembered.
cd in the terminal and the pane follows automatically.cd in the terminal (keyboard focus stays in the pane).On SSH hosts, following the terminal requires the host to report its directory. If the footer shows “Directory sync needs shell integration (Shell menu)”, install it once — see Uploads & shell integration.
Double-click a file (or choose Insert Path in Terminal) to type its shell-quoted path into the terminal — build the command around it and press ↩ yourself. Copy Path puts the path on the clipboard instead. Both work on multi-selections.
Transfers use scp over the session’s own connection — no second
login, and it works on password-authenticated hosts. Progress and results show
in the pane’s footer.
nano '<path>' into the session and runs it — quick edits without leaving the terminal.The bar along the bottom of the pane shows the full path of the selected file, the number of items when several are selected, and the folder you are in when nothing is. The text can be selected and copied, and hovering shows the whole path when it is too long to fit.
Select a file and choose Get Info (or press ⌘I / click the File Info toolbar button) to open the inspector: kind, symlink target, location, size, dates, link count, and permissions — the mode string with its octal value, owner, and group.
This works for search results too. Those arrive without details — OliTerm does not stat 500 files to fill a table — so selecting one fetches them for that file alone, and the inspector briefly says Reading details… while it does.
Select a file and press Space, or choose Quick Look from the context menu, to look inside it without opening anything. Press Space again to close.
Local files preview straight from disk. Remote files have to reach your Mac first — Quick Look can only preview real files — so OliTerm fetches them:
nginx.conf previewed in place. Quick Look has no renderer for
.conf, so OliTerm shows it as text — the title still says nginx.conf..zshrc, .gitconfig, hosts,
Makefile — would come up as a blank page. OliTerm previews those
through a temporary .txt copy instead. Your real file is never
renamed, and the preview still shows its true name.Preview copies live in a temporary folder and are deleted when the tab closes.
The search field above the list — Search this host, or Search this Mac on a local session — searches the entire host, not the folder you are looking at. Type and press ↩; press ⎋ or click the ✕ to go back to browsing. Results show full paths, and double-clicking one jumps to its folder with the file selected.
To work with a result where it lives, choose Go to Enclosing
Folder from its context menu (or double-click it). The pane leaves the
results, opens that folder with the file selected and scrolled into view — and
because navigating the pane also types cd into the session, your
shell ends up there too.
OliTerm uses the fastest index the host actually has, and the footer always says which one answered:
| Backend | When it is used |
|---|---|
| Spotlight | macOS hosts (and your Mac) — via mdfind |
| plocate / locate | Linux hosts that have one installed |
| find | Anything else — scans the filesystem, /proc, /sys and /dev skipped |
locate and plocate answer from a database that is
usually rebuilt once a day, so results can be stale and may list files that
have since been deleted. That is why the footer names the backend. When it
matters, click Search Exhaustively to rerun the search with
find, which reads the disk as it is right now — expect it to take
minutes on a large host.Searches stop at 500 results, and a running search can be stopped at any time with the Stop button.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| Open | Opens the selected folder in the pane |
| Go to Enclosing Folder | Search results: opens the file’s folder with it selected, and cds the session there |
| Quick Look | Previews the file without opening it (Space) |
| Edit | Types and runs nano on the file in the session |
| Edit in BBEdit | Opens the file in BBEdit; remote saves upload back automatically |
| Insert Path in Terminal | Types the shell-quoted path(s) — never runs anything |
| Copy Path / Copy Paths | Copies the full path(s) to the clipboard |
| Download | SSH sessions: copies the selection to Downloads and reveals it |
| Get Info | Shows the info inspector (⌘I) |
| Refresh | Reloads the listing |