Glimpse MediaGlimpse for Ubuntu and GNOME
Glimpse File Manager
Click a folder and its contents open in the next column; click a file and a preview opens beside them. It brings the full-size Glimpse viewer, picture tags, search and pinned folders, and adds a built-in terminal, an Organiser, Samba network shares and Advanced AI Search.
What it does
Advanced AI Search
- Describe what you want in your own words: “Word or Excel files that mention Acme Ltd, changed this year”
- Finds files and folders, and the words inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OpenDocument, PDF and text files
- Say how to match: whole words (the default), words containing it, or fuzzy for similar words and typing mistakes; the plan states the choice before anything runs
- The AI runs offline on your own computer with Ollama, and is never sent your folders or file contents; the app can install and manage it for you
- Run the search in the built-in Terminal, or list the results in the columns with the matching text beside each; it only reads, never changes anything
- Help has a page of examples, and the app understands terms like “whole word”, “fuzzy”, “last 3 months” and “spreadsheets” itself
Columns and previews
- Start from Home, a folder, a drive or a pinned folder and click your way down, one column per folder
- Preview pictures (also camera RAW, HEIC, AVIF, WebP), videos and songs, PDFs, Office and LibreOffice files, e-books, comics, archives, fonts, Markdown, code in colour, emails, calendars, databases and more
- Press Space for a bigger look; videos and songs play
- An address bar, folder tabs along the path and a History button
- Open pictures, videos and music full size in Glimpse's own viewer
A terminal under the columns
- Press F4: your shell, started in the folder you are in and following you from folder to folder
- Run a script from a right-click menu, or keep your own Scripts menu
- Four ready-made Glimpse Scripts: File Search, Launcher Tool, Mirror Manager and Samba Manager
Organise
- Copy, cut and paste, also to and from GNOME Files; drag onto any folder to move, hold Ctrl to copy
- Moves and copies show progress in the bottom bar, copying several items at once
- Undo (Ctrl+Z) puts back moves, copies, renames and deletions, out of the Trash too; the Trash shows each connected drive's Trash
- Extract zip, tar, 7z, RAR and more, with passwords; make zip (with AES password), tar and 7z archives
- Change who can read, change and run files in Properties, also for everything inside a folder
- The Organiser (F3): three folders beside the columns for moving files about
Search and tags
- Search pinned folders, everywhere or chosen drives, for files, folders or both; it runs in the background so the window never waits
- Find by name, type, date and tag
- Tag any file or folder; Tags in the sidebar groups things from different places; pictures keep tags as standard XMP and IPTC keywords
Network
- Connect to Samba and Windows shares, as a guest or with a password kept in your keyring
- Browse, copy, move, rename and delete network files like any others; files opened from a share save back automatically
- Share your own folders on the network, read-only or with changes allowed
Your way
- Light or dark, and a Colour that runs through everything that lights up
- Can be your default file manager, and can stay running in the background so windows open at once
- Drives show how full they are
A closer look
Install it
For Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and newer. Open a Terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T), paste these lines one at a time and press Enter. The first two add the Glimpse software source; the last installs the app. apt fetches everything it needs from Ubuntu itself, and updates come with your normal Ubuntu updates.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:turone/glimpse sudo apt update sudo apt install glimpse-file-manager
To remove it: sudo apt remove glimpse-file-manager. The software source is the Glimpse PPA on Launchpad, which has all four Glimpse apps.
The code is open: launchpad.net/glimpse-file-manager. Problems and ideas go there too, or to [email protected].
Designed by Salvatore Turone and written with the help of Claude Code, Anthropic's AI coding tool: the ideas, design and testing are his; Claude wrote most of the code.
Glimpse Media Viewer
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