Flea on Omarchy

Flea on Omarchy: install & use the keyboard-first file manager

Flea is a keyboard-first GUI file manager built specifically for Omarchy — a Rust backend with a Quickshell front end that follows your Omarchy theme. Vim-style navigation, macOS-style Quick Look previews, and Finder-style views, all in Hyprland’s aesthetic.

TL;DR install

# From Omarchy's repo (reviewed builds)
omarchy pkg add flea

# Or the faster-updating AUR prebuilt (releases ship minutes after upstream)
omarchy pkg aur add flea-bin

Install only one of the two — both own /usr/bin/flea and pacman refuses to install the pair together.

Getting started in 5 minutes

1. First launch

Launch Flea from the app launcher or run flea in a terminal. Switch views with Ctrl+1 (list), Ctrl+2 (columns), Ctrl+3 (grid). Tabs work like a browser: t for a new tab, w to close, 1–9 to switch.

2. The 3 things you need to know

• Navigate with Vim keys. j/k move up/down, h goes to the parent folder, l enters a folder. Press ? inside Flea for the full keymap. Copy/cut/paste are y/x/p or the usual Ctrl+C/X/V.
• Space is Quick Look. Select any file and press Space to preview it — images, PDFs (page through them), video, text, code, even archive contents — without opening an app.
• Every file operation is undoable. Copy, move, rename, trash, compress, extract — press z to undo a write. The undo journal is the safety net; use it.

3. Make it your default

Flea doesn’t take over by default — you opt in. In a terminal inside your Omarchy session:

flea --default

This sets Flea as the inode/directory handler, routes “Show in folder” requests from browsers to Flea, and makes Super+Shift+F / Super+Alt+Shift+F open Flea instead of Nautilus. To also make Flea the file chooser (the Open/Save dialogs every app raises):

flea --picker
systemctl --user restart xdg-desktop-portal

Changed your mind? flea --default off (and flea --picker off) hand everything back. Always run those before uninstalling (omarchy pkg drop flea).

4. Config location

Settings live in ~/.config/flea/: ui.json (text size, menus, key preset — edited through the Settings window at ,) and view.json (view state). The Settings window has three sections: Keys (Default, Vim, Mac, or Windows preset), Display (text size, spacing, corner radius), and Menus (hide context-menu rows you never touch).

5. Network and devices

The sidebar rail mounts USB drives, phones and cameras over MTP/PTP/AFC (iPhones need to be unlocked and trusted once), and the Network dialog connects to SMB, SFTP, FTPS, WebDAV, NFS, Dropbox, and Taildrop shares — with password prompts for shares that require them.

Common issues & fixes

Writable SMB shares report “That directory could not be read”

Fix: Fixed upstream in 0.3.6 — update (omarchy update, or omarchy pkg aur add flea-bin for the faster-moving AUR build). (v0.3.6 release notes, issue #194)

Flea exits with “the shell config is missing,” or fails silently

Fix: This was a packaging bug: 0.3.2 moved the Quickshell entries into ui/boot and the Omarchy repo package didn’t install them. Fixed in 0.3.5+ on both packages — update, don’t hand-install the missing files. The missing UI file is now named in an error instead of failing silently. (omacom/omarchy-pkgs packaging fix)

PDF and media previews don’t render on a fresh install

Fix: Root cause: qt6-webengine and qt6-multimedia were missing from the package’s declared Qt dependencies, so a clean box (one where no other package had already pulled them in) couldn’t load the PDF/media preview modules. Fixed in the PKGBUILD — update to a current build. (upstream commit)

Uncontrolled memory growth (~5 GB) then a crash in long sessions

Fix: Still open as of v0.3.8 (issue #151): the maintainer couldn’t reproduce it in a one-hour soak, so it remains unresolved. If it hits you, add your reproduction details to the issue and restart Flea as a workaround — it’s not a config problem you can fix.

NFS mounts misbehave, or folder renames fail on some NFS servers

Fix: Renames on NFS servers that refuse no-replace renames were fixed in 0.3.8. But an unexplained NFS problem remains open as a known issue on v0.3.8 — if NFS is central to your workflow, keep a backup file manager handy for that share. (v0.3.8 release notes)

Pairs well with / If you hate this, try

Pairs well with

• omasend (send files you just found to nearby devices over the LAN), tailscale (Taildrop shares mount directly in Flea’s Network dialog), and Flea’s own shelf — send files there from any menu, then drag them into any app.

If you hate this, try

• Strata — the other Omarchy-native file manager (same niche, different trade-offs; in the maintainer’s own benchmarks Strata wins memory on media folders, Flea wins speed on huge listings). Thunar for something lighter with no keyboard-first pretense. Ranger if you’d rather live in the terminal anyway.

Comparison: Flea vs Strata vs Nautilus vs Thunar

One-line verdict: If you want a file manager that looks and feels like it belongs on Omarchy and you prefer the keyboard, Flea is the pick; Strata is the alternative in the same lane, and Nautilus is fine if you never open it.