Strongly agree. Keyboard interfaces can be very fast and efficient, but their weakness is having to learn a separate keymap (or set of options) to use a new program.

Vim keys is the closest console programs have to a common language! I seriously think all console programs should use a vim-like keymap. Not Emacs, because Emacs has a completely different philosophy - integrate everything into Emacs. Emacs is the prototype IDE. Emacs doesn't seek to export its keybindings, it seeks to import everything.

The problem with using "j" to go down is that it prevents you from using "j" to filter files having a "j" in their name.

Presumably a vim mode user would jump straight to `/` to filter, or i/a, or f{letter}, etc.

That was first thing I did - check if I can navigate vim style. However it has different philosophy. It has fuzzy search, so that you just type name of directory which you want to enter, it will be filtered out and hit enter. Now you can explore it.

A couple of programs substitue that with ctrl+[hjkl].

You can define your own shortcuts for navigation. See for example this: https://github.com/Canop/broot/issues/24#issuecomment-572481...

Same. It seems like it could be useful, but I'm virtually handicapped after decades of vim mode in a sense I cannot efficiently use any software that doesn't support vim keystrokes (well, nobody really can, they just don't know that).

I did the same thing. A vim mode would be a nice addition. To search for j, I think creating an insert mode would be best.

Better `/`. It is already default in dozens of programs with vim-like layout, including as prominent ones as man, less, ranger and more.

I too agree with strength that is strong. Just yesterday I was googling how to get tree to respect my git ignore. The universe heard and responded with broot!

But without first class support for vi navigation, be will end up replacing tree as my directory preview pane in vifm.