File Management

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

Opening a Project

Use File > Open Project or the folder icon in the sidebar to select and open your Astro project directory. Astro Editor will automatically scan for content collections and display them in the sidebar.

Astro Editor scans the project and lists its content collections in the sidebar.

Caution

For security reasons, Astro Editor cannot open projects located in certain system directories. If you attempt to open a project in one of these locations, you’ll see an error.

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.

Clicking a collection shows its files; any subdirectories appear above them.

What’s shown in the sidebar

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 preferences). The filename is shown if none exists.
Date	Publication date (or whatever pubDate field is configured in the preferences) if it exists.
MDX Badge	For files of that type.
Draft Badge	For files with draft: true (or whatever draft field is configured in the preferences).
Filename	Including the file extension.

The Context Menu

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.

Creating New Files

When a collection is open, you can create a new file with Command + N CmdN Control + N CtrlN Command + N CmdN 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. The file will have default frontmatter values from your collection schema.