Nemo: I can't move to search results without the mouse. This is unacceptable in 2026... But at least it has Meld as an awesome file-compare plugin in the Software Manager. However, it has no audio statistics and can't view audio metadata in file properties.

Thunar: I can select search results by keyboard, but I can't cut and paste files from an external drive to the internal drive; for some reason "Paste" is grayed out. It has no "open as root" folder feature, but I can at least cut regardless in Nemo without root access.

Yazi: I can't even install it because sudo apt install snapd, which seems to be a prerequisite to getting it on here, is yielding:

Package snapd is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or is only available from another source

E: Package 'snapd' has no installation candidate

I had bad experiences with Double Commander and Dolphin on Windows; it was just harder to do stuff and the context menus felt lacking. Are they still worth trying?

I'd give dolphin a try. I know it can cut/paste across drives, I did that the other day.

However, I'm not sure about the search issue. I use my mouse heavily because it's faster for me.

It's always worth trying something you haven't used on Linux yet, and it's often worth trying something you haven't used in a while since updates exist.

Try following the official installation instructions: https://yazi-rs.github.io/docs/installation/#debian

Or if that doesn't work, build from source. Build Rust projects from source is generally pretty easy.

Dolphin is great. PCManFM is also stellar.

One more vote for Dolphin. KDE apps let you define custom keyboard shortcuts, so OP might be able to create one for focusing the search box

for what it's worth, i just did all this in dolphin with just the keyboard: keyword search in ~, navigated results, picked a range of files, copied to clipboard, navigated to a secondary drive and directory on it, and pasted those files.

I just want to be able to tab over from the query field to the results. It's insane that Nemo doesn't have this. I'll revisit Dolphin, thanks.

Thanks, I don't think I either heard or remembered that last one!

I'm having difficulty putting it in dark mode on Mint Cinnamon... any ideas?

E: Unable to locate package yazi

It's okay, I guess; Nemo is good enough for now (and Nemo Compare is absolutely essential to resolving my Syncthing conflicts anyway)... but thanks for the find and idea.