A file viewer for your terminal. Point it at any directory, see what changed, preview everything.
Built for watching coding agents work, but useful anywhere you want a quick read-only view of files sorted by what changed most recently.
- Shows files sorted by most recent changes (git-aware or plain filesystem)
- Syntax-highlighted preview with inline diffs
- Previews Office docs (docx, pptx, xlsx), PDFs, images, and zip archives
- Works in git repos and regular directories
- Refreshes every 2 seconds
Homebrew:
brew tap kateleext/homebrew-tap
brew install perch
Go:
go install github.com/kateleext/perch/cmd/perch@latest
Direct download:
# macOS arm64 (Apple Silicon)
curl -L https://github.com/kateleext/perch/releases/download/v0.0.5/perch_darwin_arm64.tar.gz | tar xz -C /usr/local/bin
# macOS x86_64 (Intel)
curl -L https://github.com/kateleext/perch/releases/download/v0.0.5/perch_darwin_amd64.tar.gz | tar xz -C /usr/local/bin
# Linux arm64
curl -L https://github.com/kateleext/perch/releases/download/v0.0.5/perch_linux_arm64.tar.gz | tar xz -C /usr/local/bin
# Linux x86_64
curl -L https://github.com/kateleext/perch/releases/download/v0.0.5/perch_linux_amd64.tar.gz | tar xz -C /usr/local/bin
perch # current directory
perch /some/path # any directory
Run it in a split pane next to your editor or agent.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
up/down |
Navigate files |
j/k |
Scroll preview |
h/l |
Pan wide content left/right |
g/G |
Jump to top/bottom |
c |
Copy file content |
p |
Copy file path |
+/- |
Resize file list |
q |
Quit |
Full preview: Any text file with syntax highlighting (100+ languages), Markdown with styled headings/tables/code blocks
Office docs: Word (.docx) with heading hierarchy, PowerPoint (.pptx) with slide dividers, Excel (.xlsx) as rainbow-colored tables, OpenDocument formats
Other: PDF text extraction, image preview (half-block rendering), zip archive contents
Files it can't preview get a clean placeholder instead of garbled output.