I vibed an orthodox file explorer with Tauri + Rust + TypeScript

Ivan Postigo — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 09:19:30 +0000

Inspired by 'Total commander' (https://www.ghisler.com/), I vibed Panex, an orthodox file manager (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_manager#Orthodox_file_managers).

I built PanEx to browse multiple directories at once, and drag files between them.

What it does

Multi-pane browsing — split right or down, as many panes as you want
Drag & drop between panes (hold Alt to copy instead of move)
Full keyboard navigation — arrows, tab between panes, enter to open, Cmd+F to search
4 themes — Dark, Rainbow, Retro 3.1 (Windows-style), and TUI
Sortable columns — click to sort by name, extension, size, or date
Inline folder expansion — expand folders in-place without navigating away
Breadcrumb path bar — click any segment to jump to a parent directory
Per-pane search — real-time filtering with Cmd+F

Tech stack

Rust backend via Tauri v2 — all filesystem operations happen in Rust
Vanilla TypeScript frontend — no framework. Just TS + HTML + CSS
~1500 lines of CSS for 4 complete themes
Builds to native apps on macOS, Windows, and Linux

I deliberately avoided frameworks to keep it fast and lean. The entire frontend is a handful of TS files with manual DOM updates — directory reads feel instant.

Try it

Web demo: https://ivapo.github.io/PanEx/demo/
Download: https://ivapo.github.io/PanEx/
Source: https://github.com/Ivapo/PanEx

The web demo runs entirely in-browser with a simulated filesystem so you can try it without installing anything.

What's next

Still early — feedback and contributions welcome. If you find it useful, the repo is open source and stars are appreciated.
I will add a settings menu.

Just joined

Ivan Postigo — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 08:58:30 +0000

Hello, I just joined to the community and look forward to grow with it!

DEV Community: Ivan Postigo

I vibed an orthodox file explorer with Tauri + Rust + TypeScript

Just joined