Edith

A GTK4/libadwaita SFTP/FTP client for live remote file editing. (a poor man's Nova ©)

Connect to remote servers over SFTP or FTP, browse files, and edit them in a tabbed editor with syntax highlighting — changes are uploaded back on save.

Alpha software. Early access for the brave and the bug‑tolerant.

Features

• SFTP & FTP — connect via SFTP (SSH), plain FTP, or FTPS with explicit TLS (optional/required) and implicit TLS
• Server management — saved connections with password/key auth, organized into groups; drag-and-drop reordering of groups in the sidebar; two-level navigation with groups in the sidebar and servers in the main pane; double-click to connect
• Server search — Ctrl+F to filter servers by name
• File browser — navigate remote directories; column view with sortable Name, Size, Permissions, and Modified columns; show/hide detail columns with a toggle; alternating row shading; drag-and-drop move, upload, copy, rename, delete; download files and folders; keyboard shortcuts for common actions
• Create archive — create tar.gz, tar.bz2, tar.xz, tar, or zip archives from remote files and folders directly on the server (SFTP only); downloads, compresses locally, and uploads the archive with progress feedback
• Multi-select — toggle selection mode to select multiple files and folders for bulk delete, move, or download
• Show hidden files — toggle to reveal or hide dot-files; button icon reflects the current state
• Pin to sidebar — pin frequently used files and folders to the top of the sidebar for quick access
• Path bar — clickable breadcrumb navigation in the title bar with back/forward history
• Monaco editor — VS Code's editor engine (WebKitGTK), with syntax highlighting for 80+ languages, Emmet support, find/replace, go to line, word wrap, and customizable themes and fonts
• Editor settings — minimap, render whitespace, sticky scroll, font ligatures, format on save, line numbers (on/off/relative)
• SVG preview — toggle a live side-by-side preview panel for SVG files; refreshes after each save
• Image viewer — raster images (PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, BMP, ICO, TIFF, AVIF) open in a dedicated read-only tab showing dimensions, DPI, and file size
• Syntax selector — per-file language override in the status bar
• Custom syntax associations — map file extensions to languages (e.g. .tpl → HTML)
• Secure credentials — stored in the system keychain (GNOME Keyring or compatible); never written to disk in plain text
• Live editing — files downloaded to temp, edited locally, uploaded on save
• Home directory support — use ~ as initial directory to resolve the server's home path
• Resizable sidebar — drag to adjust; toggle with the button in the headerbar or F9
• Safe quit — warns before closing if there are unsaved edits or active file transfers

Keyboard shortcuts

Key	Action
Ctrl+N	Add server
Ctrl+Shift+N	New window
Ctrl+F	Search servers
Ctrl+D	Disconnect
Ctrl+S	Save file
Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z	Undo / Redo
Ctrl+Shift+F	Find and replace
Ctrl+G	Go to line
Ctrl+W	Close tab
Ctrl+Q	Quit
F9	Toggle sidebar
F2	Rename selected file
Delete	Delete selected file (or selected files in multi-select mode)
F5	Refresh directory
Backspace	Go up one directory

Dependencies

• Python 3
• GTK 4
• libadwaita
• WebKitGTK 6.0
• python-paramiko
• python-gobject
• python-keyring

Building (Arch Linux)

makepkg -sc
sudo pacman -U edith-*.pkg.tar.zst

If pacman reports conflicting files (e.g. after a manual install), use:

sudo pacman -U --overwrite '/usr/share/edith/*' edith-*.pkg.tar.zst

Building (manual)

meson setup builddir --prefix=/usr
ninja -C builddir
sudo meson install -C builddir

Usage

edith

Or launch from your application menu.

License

MIT

Screenshots

Disclaimer

This project was developed with AI assistance. The code has been analysed with Codacy and Bandit. Use at your own discretion.