Strata on Omarchy

Strata on Omarchy: the keyboard-first file manager with Miller columns

Strata is a free, keyboard-first file manager for Linux (Rust + GTK4) — Finder-style Miller columns, instant fuzzy filename search, and rich previews that render inside a Bubblewrap sandbox so untrusted files can’t touch your system.

TL;DR install

omarchy pkg add strata

Launch it from your app launcher (or type strata in a terminal). You get three browse modes — navigable Miller columns, a thumbnail grid, and a sortable table — plus Ctrl+K fuzzy search that works while the tree is still being indexed.

Getting started in 5 minutes

1. Install and launch

Run the install command above, then launch Strata from the app launcher or a terminal. It opens on your home directory. On Omarchy, Strata follows your active Omarchy theme — if you use the Quattro theme, it follows that live (six bundled themes plus custom themes are also available in Settings).

2. The 3 things you need to know

• Miller columns navigation. The default Columns view works like macOS Finder: arrow keys move within a column, →/l descends into the selected folder (opening a new column), ←/h goes back up. Each column filters independently, and folders peek on hover. If columns feel weird, switch to the Icons grid or the sortable List table — the mode buttons are in the header.
• Fuzzy search with Ctrl+K. This is the killer feature. Press Ctrl+K anywhere and start typing a filename or path; results stream in while the tree is still being indexed. Global search covers Home and all mounted local drives, regardless of which folder you’re in. (Deliberate tradeoff, straight from the docs: this is fast filename/path search, not file-content search.)
• Preview pane with Space. Select a file and hit Space (or just select it in Columns view) to get a bounded preview: source code with syntax highlighting, images, camera RAW, PDFs, audio with a now-playing view, video with a keyframe storyboard while scrubbing, and natively rendered Markdown/static HTML. Everything backed by a native parser runs in an isolated Bubblewrap sandbox, not in the app process — if something can’t be sandboxed, Strata shows “Preview unavailable” instead of risking it.

3. Config location

Strata keeps user preferences and custom themes under the XDG configuration directories (check ~/.config/strata after your first launch — early releases had no user config file at all). Current releases expose Settings → Updates (automatic update checks are on by default; turn them off there), Settings → Actions for custom context-menu scripts, and Settings → General for desktop integration options.

4. Make it your default file manager

In-app: Settings → General → Desktop integration sets Strata as the inode/directory handler and installs the FileManager1 D-Bus service, so “Reveal in File Manager” from other apps uses Strata. On Lua-based Omarchy, also rebind the stock Nautilus shortcuts (Super+Shift+F, Super+Alt+Shift+F) in ~/.config/hypr/bindings.lua per the upstream README, then hyprctl reload. These user overrides survive Omarchy updates.

5. Other useful shortcuts

Default map; press F1 for the full reference: Ctrl+L for path/URI entry (type smb://... for network shares), Ctrl+F to filter the current pane, Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z to undo/redo file operations, F2 to rename, Alt+arrows for history and parent navigation.

Common issues & fixes

Previews show “Preview unavailable” — Bubblewrap missing

Strata refuses to run image, RAW, PDF, thumbnail, or media parsers without a sandbox. From the README: “Bubblewrap is required: preview parsing fails closed rather than running untrusted native parsers without a sandbox.” So if bubblewrap isn’t installed, every parser-backed preview quietly degrades to “Preview unavailable” while the app otherwise works fine — which looks like a Strata bug but is really a missing dependency.

Fix: Install the runtime dependency set and restart Strata (bubblewrap fixes parser-backed previews; ffmpegthumbnailer/ffmpeg fix video thumbnails, which otherwise fall back to a generic icon):

sudo pacman -S --needed bubblewrap ffmpeg ffmpegthumbnailer fontconfig gst-libav gst-plugins-good gtk4 gtksourceview5 poppler-glib

Phone photos (12MP+) fail to preview or thumbnail, possible core dump

Fix: Real reported issue (lgse/strata#54, fixed): the sandbox’s file-size limit mirrored the output cap, and since gdk-pixbuf decodes through glycin to width × height × channels, any image over roughly 11MP exceeded the limit and the loader was killed with SIGXFSZ. Update to a current release — the fix decoupled the sandbox file-size cap (now 512 MiB) from the output-byte cap. In-app: Settings → Updates, or reinstall the latest release.

Sony .ARW (and some other RAW) previews fail

Fix: Real reported issue (lgse/strata#165, fixed): the sandbox bind-mounted every file as extensionless /input, so ImageMagick treated Sony .ARW (a TIFF-container RAW) as plain TIFF and failed. Update to a current release; the fix keeps a sanitized original extension across the sandbox boundary. For broader camera RAW support also install sudo pacman -S --needed imagemagick libraw dcraw.

Animated GIF previews crash or hang

Fix: Real reported issue (lgse/strata#128): GIF playback hit a hardware-preview sandbox issue — FFmpeg’s retained output stream wasn’t bounded, and applying guessed memory limits to opaque GPU driver internals crashed the preview. Update to a release containing the bounded-media-streaming fix (lgse/strata#119): GIFs now play with bounded media streaming, hardware acceleration treated as best-effort with reliable software fallback.

Ctrl+K search doesn’t find files on network shares

Fix: Not a bug — a documented limitation. Global search covers Home and all mounted local drives; “URI-native remote shares are not yet included” (README). So smb:// and sftp:// locations (reachable via Ctrl+L) simply don’t appear in global search results. Navigate to the share first (Ctrl+L, enter the URI, authenticate), then use pane-scoped filtering (Ctrl+F) inside that location.

Pairs well with / If you hate this, try

Pairs well with

• Omarchy’s launcher for apps, yazi or ranger for the times you’re already in the shell, and udiskie for encrypted-volume unlock — Strata can take over udiskie’s unlock dialog on Omarchy 3/4 via Settings → General → Desktop integration.

If you hate this, try

• flea (thisisgm/flea) — same keyboard-first idea, but a Quickshell front end instead of GTK4, built Omarchy-first. Or stick with Nautilus if you don’t care about keyboard-first. If Miller columns are the thing you hate, Thunar gives you a classic tree+list layout with near-zero overhead.

Comparison: Strata vs flea vs Nautilus vs Thunar

One-line verdict: Both are free and keyboard-first — but they’re different philosophies. Strata is the GTK4 route: Finder-style Miller columns, the deepest preview engine of the bunch (parsers sandboxed via Bubblewrap), live theme following. flea is the Omarchy-native route: Rust backend + Quickshell front end, built for Omarchy from day one, leaning into speed and theme integration. Columns and previews → Strata; Omarchy-native speed → flea.