LX: A nicer way to list your files

A modern alternative to ls with more readable formatting, colours, icons, and customizable output.

Features

• 🎨 Colorized output with file type icons
• 📊 Multiple display modes: short (default), long (-l), one-per-line (-1), and tree view (-r)
• 👻 Hidden files support: use -a to show all files
• 🌳 Recursive tree view: display directory hierarchies with -r
• ⚙️ Configurable: customize colors, spacing, display options, and tree styles
• 📏 Smart alignment: properly handles unicode characters and icons

Demo

Requirements

• Rust (>= 1.56.1) and Cargo
• Either a nerd font or a terminal like Ghostty which has nerd font icons pre-installed.

Installation

The easiest way to install lx is using Cargo:

cargo install lx-cli

This will install the lx binary to ~/.cargo/bin/, which is typically already in your PATH.

Alternatively, you can build it from source:

git clone https://github.com/JackDerksen/lx-cli
cd lx-cli
cargo build --release
cp target/release/lx ~/.local/bin/

For local development, use the provided install script to automatically build and install:

./install.sh

This script will build the project and copy the binary to ~/.local/bin/.

Make sure ~/.local/bin is in your PATH:

export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

Add this to your shell configuration file (.bashrc, .zshrc, etc.) to make it permanent.

Quick Start

After installation, simply run:

lx

Usage

lx is used pretty much just like regular old ls:

# List files in current directory
lx

# List files in long format
lx -l

# Show hidden files
lx -a

# Display one file per line
lx -1

# Show directory tree recursively
lx -r

# Combine flags
lx -l -a size

# List files in a specific directory
lx /path/to/directory

Flags

• -l, --long: Use a long listing format with detailed file information
• -a, --all: Show all files, including hidden ones (starting with .)
• -1: Force single column output (useful for piping to other commands)
• -r, --recursive: Show directory tree recursively with proper hierarchy

Configuration

lx can be customized using a configuration file at ~/.config/lx/config.

See config.example for all available options and detailed configuration examples.

Configuration Sections

The configuration file supports the following sections:

• [colors]: Customize text colors for different file types
• [icons]: Set custom icons for different file types
• [icons.colors]: Customize colors for icons separately from filenames
• [display]: Control layout options like column spacing and multi-column wrapping
• [display.tree]: Control tree display style for recursive listings (style = "ascii" or style = "indent")

For a complete list of available colors, icons, and configuration options, please refer to config.example.