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Text Viewer

XeFM has a built-in text viewer for source code, config files, logs, and any other text. The encoding is detected automatically — UTF-8 with or without BOM, Shift-JIS, EUC-JP, ISO-2022-JP, Latin-1 / CP1252 and more, with a manual override through change_encoding (see Text Encodings). Put the cursor on a file and run view_file (or open_item on a file with no other enter rule) to open it full-window, without leaving XeFM. Binary files are detected and show a short placeholder instead of mojibake.

For file types with a richer renderer — Markdown especially — the viewer can switch between the rendered view and the plain source (see below and Markdown Viewer).

Opening & controls

The viewer draws its own keys along the bottom, and F1 inside it lists them all — both read from your KEY_BINDINGS, so they are right whatever you have bound.

Action	What it does
`view_file`	View the focused file in the text viewer
`open_item`	Same, for a file with no other `enter` rule
`↑` `↓` `PgUp` `PgDn` `Home` `End`	Scroll by line, page, or to either end
`←` `→`	Scroll horizontally (when line wrap is off)
`toggle_wrap`	Toggle line wrapping
`isearch`	Incremental search — then `↑` / `↓` step between matches
`toggle_view_mode`	Toggle rendered / raw view (Markdown and other rich types)
`change_encoding`	Choose the text encoding (Auto / explicit)
`edit_file`	Edit the viewed file in the configured editor
`Cmd`/`Ctrl` + `C`	Copy the current selection
`Cmd`/`Ctrl` + `A`	Select the whole file
`F1`	Key help
`quit` / `Esc`	Close the viewer

The view/edit keys are rebindable in your config’s KEY_BINDINGS; the arrow / page / home / end scroll keys are viewer-local and always active.

Tabs & syntax highlighting

Tabs are expanded to spaces automatically, aligned to 8-column tab stops. Expansion is column-aware, so wide (CJK / emoji) characters still line up.
Syntax highlighting is applied automatically when Pygments is installed — the language is chosen from the file’s extension. Without Pygments the text still displays, just uncolored. Syntax colors follow the active theme.
Line wrapping is off by default (so long lines scroll horizontally with ← / →). Press W to wrap instead; a WRAP indicator shows in the footer.

Selecting text & copying

You can select text with the mouse and copy it to the clipboard.

Gesture	Selects
Click & drag	An arbitrary range from where you press to where you release
Double-click	The whole word under the pointer
Triple-click	The whole line under the pointer
Drag after a double / triple click	Extends by whole words / lines
Shift-click	Extends the current selection to the click
`Cmd`/`Ctrl` + `A`	Selects the entire document

The highlighted range tracks the pointer as you drag, and the selection survives scrolling — scroll away and back and it is still there.

To select more than one screenful, drag past the top or bottom of the text and hold there: the view keeps scrolling under the pointer and the selection grows with it, faster the further out you hold. Drag back inside, or release, and it stops.

Press Cmd+C (macOS) or Ctrl+C (Linux / Windows) to copy. The text viewer copies the selected source text exactly, each display line on its own line.

On a terminal

Whether the copy reaches your system clipboard depends on the terminal supporting the OSC 52 clipboard escape (most modern terminals do). The copy always works for pasting back inside XeFM regardless.

Rich copy from the Markdown view