File Management

The left sidebar is your primary interface for navigating between files and collections in your Astro project.

Opening a Project

File > Open Project ( Command + Shift + O Control + Shift + O Command + Shift + O ), the folder icon in the sidebar or the project’s name in the title bar shows the project list: every project you’ve opened in Astro Editor, most recent first. Type to search by name or path, and press Enter Enter Enter to open the highlighted project. To open a project for the first time, choose Open Folder… at the top of the list (or press Command + O Control + O Command + O ) and pick your Astro project’s folder. Astro Editor scans it for content collections and shows them in the sidebar.

Opening a project takes you back to the file you had open when you last left it, if it’s still there. If you closed the file before leaving, nothing opens.

Right-clicking a project in the list gives you these options:

Action	Description
Reveal in Finder	Show the project’s folder in your OS’s file explorer.
Open in IDE	Open the project in your configured IDE. Only shown when one is configured.
Copy Path	Copy the project folder’s path to the clipboard.
Project Settings…	For the open project: open Project Settings.
Locate…	For a missing project: choose the folder it moved to.
Remove from Astro Editor…	Remove the project from the list and delete its settings in Astro Editor. The project’s own files aren’t touched. You can also press Command + Backspace Control + Backspace Command + Backspace to remove the highlighted project. The open project can’t be removed.

Switching projects saves the open file first. If it can’t be saved, you stay where you are, and a message offers Switch Anyway, which loses its latest changes.

Moved projects

Astro Editor remembers projects by their folder, so if you move or rename a project’s folder, it shows as Missing in the list. Choose it (or right-click it and choose Locate…) and pick the folder’s new location to open it with its settings as they were. If you’ve already opened the new folder with Open Folder…, Astro Editor asks before replacing that copy’s settings with the missing project’s.

A project on an external drive that isn’t connected shows as Drive Not Connected instead, since it hasn’t moved. Choosing it tells you to connect the drive.

The left sidebar listing the content collections found in an open Astro project — Astro Editor scans the project and lists its content collections in the sidebar.

Navigating between files

Clicking on a collection name will show its files in the sidebar. Subdirectories are also shown and can be navigated as you’d expect.

Each collection in the list shows how many files it has. When its folder isn’t named after it, the folder’s name is shown under the collection’s. A collection with a problem has a warning or error icon, and hovering over the icon says what’s wrong. Project Settings has the details and what to do. A collection whose folder is missing or outside the project is listed dimmed, and clicking it opens Project Settings instead of its files.

The project’s icon at the top of the list of collections, and the Project Settings button at the bottom, open Project Settings.

The sidebar showing the markdown files inside a collection, with a subdirectory listed above them — Clicking a collection shows its files; any subdirectories appear above them.

A file entry in the sidebar showing its title, date, and MDX and draft badges — Each file shows its title, date, and any relevant badges.

The sidebar shows the following information for each file:

Item	Description
Title	Taken from the `title` frontmatter field (or whatever title field is configured in the Project Settings). The filename is shown if none exists.
Date	Publication date (or whatever pubDate field is configured in Project Settings) if it exists.
MDX Badge	For files of that type.
Draft Badge	For files with `draft: true` (or whatever draft field is configured in Project Settings).
Filename	Including the file extension.

Right-clicking a file in the left sidebar gives you the following options:

Action	Description
Rename	Edit the filename.
Duplicate	Create a duplicate of the file with a new name.
Reveal in Finder	Open the file’s location in your OS’s file explorer.
Copy Path	Copy the absolute file path to the clipboard.
Open in IDE	Open the file in your configured IDE. Only shown when one is configured.
Delete	Delete the file, after asking. It isn’t moved to the Bin, and if it’s open, it’s closed.

Creating New Files

When a collection is open, you can create a new file with Command + N Control + N Command + N or the “New File” button in the toolbar. If you’re in a subdirectory, the file is created there. If you’re at the collection root, the file is created at the root. Its frontmatter starts with a placeholder title, today’s date and the required fields that have an obvious empty value.

New files are named with today’s date, like 2026-11-09.md. To name them from their title instead, or both, set the collection’s file name pattern: the file is renamed once you write its title.