Make it yours.

Settings & appearance

Press ⌘, for Settings. Most of what you’ll reach for lives in two places — Appearance for the look, Keyboard and Hotbar for how you drive it. Everything applies live.

The look

• Theme — pick from the built-ins (Rascal Light, dark, and several more) in Settings ▸ Appearance or View ▸ Theme, or load your own (below).
• Accent colour — recolours selection, badges, and the active-pane border on top of any theme.
• Density & font size — tighten or relax row spacing and bump the base text size for a comfier list.

Keys & chrome

• Keyboard — every command is rebindable in Settings ▸ Keyboard, with live conflict detection. The full default list is in HOTKEYS.md.
• Hotbar — curate the per-pane toolbar of one-click actions in Settings ▸ Hotbar; drop your favourite commands (and plugin actions) right where you want them.
• Chrome — hide the toolbar and title bar for a quiet, content-first window, and toggle the sidebar with ⌥⌘S.
• Vim mode — flip on modal navigation and drive with hjkl, /, dd, gg, G.

Crafting a theme

A theme is a single JSON file of hex colors. Drop it in the Themes folder and Rascal repaints every panel — list, sidebar, toolbar, path bar, and the floating finders — to match. The built-in themes are written in exactly the same format, so any of them doubles as a starting template.

The fields

Colors are #RRGGBB or #RRGGBBAA (the alpha form is handy for the translucent selectionBackground). Only id, name, and the color fields are required; the rest fall back to sensible defaults.

A complete example

A soft, warm light theme called Blossom:

{
  "id":                  "blossom",
  "name":                "Blossom",
  "appearance":          "light",
  "background":          "#FFF7FA",
  "sidebarBackground":   "#FCEDF3",
  "toolbarBackground":   "#FDF1F6",
  "pathBarBackground":   "#FCEDF3",
  "rowAlternate":        "#FBEFF4",
  "labelPrimary":        "#3A1F2B",
  "labelSecondary":      "#7A5566",
  "labelTertiary":       "#B08C9C",
  "accent":              "#E0457B",
  "selectionBackground": "#E0457B33",
  "rowHeight":           24
}

1. Save the file as blossom.json in ~/Library/Application Support/FinderTwo/Themes/ — View ▸ Theme ▸ Reveal Themes Folder opens it for you.
2. Choose View ▸ Theme ▸ Reload Themes (or relaunch).
3. Apply it from View ▸ Theme, ⌘⇧P → Theme: Blossom, or Settings ▸ Appearance.

Writing a plugin

A Rascal plugin is a tiny folder of JavaScript that adds new commands to the app. No build step, no npm, no compiling — write a .js file, drop it in a folder, reload. Each plugin runs in its own JavaScriptCore context with a small ft bridge to the file manager.

Anatomy of a plugin

A plugin is a folder named <anything>.ftplugin containing exactly two files — a manifest and a script:

quick-notes.ftplugin/
├─ manifest.json   # id, name, and the actions it contributes
└─ main.js         # the code, run once when Rascal loads

The manifest declares the plugin’s identity and the actions it adds. Each action’s id is what your script hooks into; its title is what the user sees in the Command Palette and the Plugins menu.

{
  "id":      "dev.you.quick-notes",
  "name":    "Quick Notes",
  "version": "1.0",
  "actions": [
    { "id": "notes.new-dated", "title": "New Dated Note" }
  ]
}

The ft API

Inside main.js the host exposes a global ft object. Register a handler for each action with ft.onAction — it’s called with an array of the currently selected file paths whenever the user runs that command.

A complete example

Here’s a working plugin that drops a dated Markdown note into whatever folder you’re viewing. It uses three of the bridge calls — read the current folder, write a file, and confirm:

ft.onAction('notes.new-dated', function (paths) {
  var dir = ft.currentURL();
  if (!dir) { ft.notify('Open a folder first'); return; }

  // YYYY-MM-DD using the JS Date
  var d = new Date();
  var pad = function (n) { return ('0' + n).slice(-2); };
  var stamp = d.getFullYear() + '-' + pad(d.getMonth() + 1) + '-' + pad(d.getDate());

  var path = dir + '/' + stamp + '-note.md';
  ft.writeFile(path, '# ' + stamp + '\n\n');
  ft.notify('Created ' + stamp + '-note.md');
});

Save the two files into the plugin folder, then:

1. Open Settings ▸ Advanced and click Reveal Plugins Folder — it opens ~/Library/Application Support/FinderTwo/Plugins/. Put quick-notes.ftplugin there.
2. Back in Settings, click Reload Plugins (or just relaunch Rascal).
3. Run it: press ⌘⇧P and type New Dated Note, or pick it from the Plugins menu.
4. Want it on a key? Give it a shortcut in Settings ▸ Keyboard, or add it to a pane’s toolbar in Settings ▸ Hotbar.