filenameupdate2

A keyboard-driven, two-pane file manager (Total Commander–style) tuned for photo workflows — taxonomic, archival, or scientific. Built in Rust on egui.

The headline trick: smart name-sync. When you've renamed P2230437.ORF → P2230437 Guilleminea densa.ORF, F5 (copy) and F6 (move) detect that they're the same file (matching base ID + EXIF DateTaken + size) and converge both sides to the more-specific suffix rather than duplicating bytes.

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Highlights

• Two-pane TC layout with green active-pane border, drive pills, breadcrumb path bar, recent-folders dropdown, status bar, fading toasts.
• List ↔ Thumbnail grid view per pane (Ctrl+T). Visible-only lazy decode, background thumbnail workers, persistent disk cache.
• Native preview for JXL via pure-Rust jxl-oxide. RAW (ORF/CR2/CR3/NEF/ARW/DNG/RAF/RW2) shows embedded JPEG; HEIC/AVIF same when available.
• EXIF panel + rotate + zoom in F3 preview. EXIF orientation tag auto-applied to all thumbnails and previews.
• Smart name-sync with taxonomic specificity: Species > Genus > Family > None. Conflicts queue through Dialog A/B.
• Batch rename (Shift+F2) with {name} {ext} {n} {n3} {date} {base} tokens + presets.
• Undo (Ctrl+Z) for the last reversible Copy / Move / Rename actions.
• Filesystem watch (notify) auto-reloads panes on external changes.
• Per-folder rating sidecar (.fnu_rate.json). Hotkeys 0..5; Ctrl+6 sorts by rating.
• Find duplicates (Ctrl+D), regex filter (Ctrl+/), recursive flat view (Ctrl+Shift+R), select-by-mask (Ctrl++ / Ctrl+-), bookmarks (Ctrl+B / Ctrl+L).
• Right-click context menu: Preview, Copy path, Open with system app, Reveal in Explorer, Copy/Move to other pane (smart-sync routed).
• Sync stats modal (F9) with side-by-side thumbnails for missing / mismatched / renamed / orphan files between panes.
• Sidecar-cached EXIF: datetaken + orientation persist in .fnu_index.json; rescans skip EXIF parse when file unchanged.

Build

cargo build --release
./target/release/filenameupdate2

Requires Rust 1.78+ (edition 2021). No native toolchain dependencies — JXL decode is pure Rust.

Hotkeys

Navigation

Key	Action
↑/↓ PgUp/PgDn	Move cursor
Enter	Descend dir / open file
Backspace	Up to parent
Tab	Swap active pane
Alt+←/→	Folder history back/forward
Alt+F1 / Alt+F2	Drive picker for left / right pane
Ctrl+G	Go to path
Ctrl+B / Ctrl+L	Add / list bookmarks

Selection

Key	Action
Insert	Toggle select + advance
Space	Toggle select + advance
Shift+↑/↓	Range select
Ctrl+A	Select all
Ctrl+I	Invert
Ctrl++ / Ctrl+-	Select / deselect by mask
Ctrl+D	Find + select duplicates

Operations

Key	Action
F2	Rename
Shift+F2	Batch rename (token-based)
F3	Preview (RAW / JXL / standard, rotatable + zoomable)
F4	Edit in text editor
F5	Copy → other pane (smart name-sync)
F6	Move → other pane (smart name-sync)
F8 / Del	Recycle
Ctrl+F8 / Shift+Del	Hard delete
F9	Sync stats modal (compare panes)
Ctrl+Z	Undo last action
Ctrl+R	Refresh
Ctrl+E	Open folder in OS file manager
Ctrl+C	Copy path

Preview

Key	Action
R / Shift+R	Rotate left / right
Mouse wheel	Zoom

Rating

Key	Action
0	Clear rating
1..5	Set 1–5 stars
Ctrl+6	Sort by rating

View

Key	Action
Ctrl+T	List ↔ thumbnail grid
Ctrl+/	Toggle regex filter
Ctrl+Shift+R	Toggle flat (recursive) view
Ctrl+H	Toggle hidden files
Ctrl+1..5	Sort by name / size / mtime / datetaken / base ID
F1	Help overlay
Ctrl+Q	Quit

How name-sync works

For each source file, the planner builds an index of the target side keyed by filename and base ID, then classifies each pair:

1. Same name, same content → NoOp (true sync).
2. Same content, different suffix — same base ID + size + DateTaken, different name (e.g. left P2230437.ORF, right P2230437 Guilleminea densa.ORF):
   • Parses each side's suffix into None < Family < Genus < Species ranks.
   • Renames the lower-rank side to the higher-rank name.
   • Tie → Dialog B (Use Left name | Use Right name | Auto: more-specific | Skip).
3. Same name, different content → Dialog A (Keep Left | Keep Right | Keep Both with _2 suffix | Skip).
4. No match → plain copy or move.

Move actions additionally recycle the (possibly renamed) source after the rename converges names.

Folder-level workflow

When the cursor is on a subdirectory with no file selection, F5/F6 operate on the folder:

1. plan_folder flags base-ID conflicts (same base ID, different names between source folder and same-named target folder) and missing-in-source files (target has files source doesn't).
2. Anomalies surface in a confirm dialog.
3. On confirm, the planner re-plans per file with plan_sync, so twin-name files still converge under the more-specific suffix instead of erroring on collision.

Delete propagation

A .fnu_index.json sidecar is written to each folder on every op. When you delete files manually in one pane, the tool diffs the on-disk state against the prior index and can propose matching deletions in the other pane.

Architecture

src/
├── app.rs           # State, frame tick, dialog wiring
├── pane.rs          # PaneState: cursor, selection, sort, filter, view mode
├── ops.rs           # Step (Copy/Move/Rename/Recycle/...), plan_sync, plan_folder
├── matching.rs      # TargetIndex + MatchKind classifier
├── parse.rs         # Filename → (base_id, suffix, specificity)
├── conflict.rs      # ConflictQueue for Dialog A/B routing
├── scan.rs          # Parallel directory scan (rayon)
├── decode.rs        # Unified decode: JXL (jxl-oxide), RAW embedded JPEG, EXIF rotate
├── thumb_worker.rs  # Background decode pool (crossbeam-channel)
├── thumb_cache.rs   # Disk thumb cache (%LOCALAPPDATA%/filenameupdate2/thumbs)
├── fs_watch.rs      # notify-based pane auto-reload
├── undo.rs          # Reversible Step inverse + capped stack
├── toast.rs         # Fading status toast queue
├── ratings.rs       # .fnu_rate.json sidecar
├── exif.rs          # EXIF DateTaken, Orientation, summary
├── index.rs         # .fnu_index.json sidecar with cached EXIF
├── config.rs        # Persisted per-pane settings, bookmarks, recent
├── ui/
│   ├── panes.rs     # List + grid view rendering
│   ├── dialog.rs    # All modals (conflict, bulk-delete, preview, batch-rename, sync-stats, help)
│   ├── toolbar.rs   # Top button bar
│   ├── statusbar.rs # Bottom status + toast stack
│   └── theme.rs     # Dark theme colors
└── lib.rs / main.rs

Testing

cargo test --tests   # 44 integration tests across 5 suites
cargo test --lib     # 56 unit tests

UI integration tests drive App::tick(&egui::Context) directly with synthetic RawInput. Snapshot tests hash tessellated clip-rects to catch layout drift. End-to-end name-sync resolution is covered by tests/ui_integration.rs::f5_copy_resolves_twin_name_via_specificity.

File-format coverage

Format	Thumbnail	Preview	Notes
JPEG / PNG / GIF / WebP / BMP / TIFF	✅	✅	egui native loaders
JXL	✅	✅	pure Rust via jxl-oxide
ORF / CR2 / CR3 / NEF / ARW / DNG / RAF / RW2	✅	✅	embedded JPEG extracted from RAW
HEIC / HEIF / AVIF	⚠️	⚠️	embedded JPEG only (pure-Rust HEVC/AV1 decode not yet viable)

License

MIT.