Files vs Flea: how Omarchy’s two file managers compare on paper
Omarchy’s own Files and the community-built Flea both want Super+Shift+F. Here is what each one’s README, release notes and pull requests promise, from install path to Flea’s self-published benchmarks.
Image: omacom/folio README (GitHub)
Omarchy users now have two file managers built specifically for their desktop. Files is Omarchy’s own, and it went from 0.1.0 to 0.4.0 between November 10 and November 11, 2026. Flea, by thisisgm, is the community-built one we first covered at the end of October, and its README calls it “The fastest GUI file manager on Omarchy.” We haven’t run either one for this piece: everything below comes from the two projects’ READMEs, release notes and pull requests.
Files is Omarchy’s pick. Its README opens with “Files (folio) is Omarchy’s file manager”, and DHH’s pull request “Replace Nautilus with Files”, merged into the quattro branch on November 10, 2026, makes inode/directory open Files and points Super+Shift+F at new omarchy-launch-files scripts. The PR description also lists org.freedesktop.FileManager1 for “Show in folder”, and Files’ Space preview taking over from Sushi. As we reported on November 11, that switch is coming in the next version: Omarchy’s base package list on master still ships nautilus and sushi, while the one on quattro ships folio.
You can already install Files, but only on the edge channel. omarchy-pkgs#2457, merged on November 10, added the folio package and set it to follow omacom/folio releases automatically. Omarchy’s package publish log shows folio 0.4.0-1 landing on the edge mirror for x86_64 and aarch64 on November 11, 2026, and, as of November 12, 2026, no folio build on rc or stable. Edge points pacman at Omarchy’s edge repository, so on that channel omarchy pkg add folio pulls it in. Getting there takes omarchy-channel-set edge, which also runs a full system update. The default-app wiring is in the quattro PR, not on master.
Flea is on every channel. As of November 12, 2026, the publish log has Flea 0.4.2 on stable, rc and edge, and its README gives a one-liner that installs it and makes it the default file manager, the file chooser for Open/Save dialogs and the app behind Super+Shift+F: omarchy pkg add flea && flea --default. flea --default off undoes it.
Under the hood they have little in common. According to its README, Files is C++ and Qt Quick, reads folders only when you open them, never crawls your home folder in the background, and shares thumbnails with other apps through ~/.cache/thumbnails. Flea is written in Rust, and since version 0.4.0 its window is drawn by a renderer built on GPUI, with a terminal interface behind flea --tui. Both are MIT-licensed.
Feature for feature, according to each project’s own documentation:
- Views. Files has a grid, a list and “Finder-style columns” on Ctrl+1/2/3, plus a split window on Ctrl+Alt+N. Flea has list, columns, grid and two panes on Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+4, plus tabs.
- Preview. Space opens a preview in both. Files covers pictures, video, audio, PDFs, text and Markdown; Flea’s Quick Look covers images, PDFs, text, media, archives and 3D model thumbnails.
- Network and sharing. Files 0.3.0 connects to servers typed into the path bar (
sftp://,smb://,davs://,ftp://), lists your tailnet machines in the sidebar, and shares by Dropbox link, Taildrop or LocalSend. Flea lists SMB, SFTP, FTPS, WebDAV, NFS, Dropbox and Taildrop. - Drives. Files 0.3.0 added Mount, Eject, formatting as exFAT, FAT32 or ext4, and burning a disk image to a USB stick or SD card. Flea mounts USB and encrypted drives, phones and cameras, and writes ISO or IMG files to USB, verifying every byte.
- Plugins. Since 0.3.0, Tailscale, Dropbox and LocalSend are plugins in Files, and 0.4.0 lets plugins add right-click menu entries. Flea documents its plugin system in
PLUGINS.md. - Languages. According to the Files release notes, 0.3.0 speaks Omarchy’s 50 languages, right to left included. Flea’s 0.4.0 notes say it includes the 50 languages Omarchy offers.
Both search as you type (Files with /, “here and below”), and Flea describes its results as ranked. Beyond that, Flea’s README lists a few things Files doesn’t mention: seven colour tags set with T then 1 to 7, a shelf in the Omarchy bar for files you want to drag elsewhere, Default, Vim, Mac and Windows key presets, and renaming many files at once.
On speed, the only numbers are Flea’s own. Its README reports a run from November 2, 2026 with the 0.4.0 release candidate, on a folder of 100,000 empty files, as medians of three runs: Flea settled in 0.75 s using 63.0 MiB, against 1.80 s and 159.1 MiB for Strata, 5.25 s for Dolphin and 20.33 s for Nautilus. The README is upfront about the limits: Flea and Strata were measured in list view and the others in their icon views, some rival results were reused, and “settled” means CPU quiet, not paint or input readiness. Its 166 ms first result when searching a million files is a backend figure, and the README concedes that “Flea’s mixed typed-first quality still trails nd and fff.” Files isn’t in any of these tables and hasn’t published benchmarks of its own.
So there’s no winner to declare here. Files is the file manager Omarchy itself is moving to, and it’s already installable if you run edge. Flea is a stable-channel install today, and it’s the only one of the two with published performance data.
Source: https://github.com/omacom/folio
