Starhacking is a thing. When you see words like “blazing fast” & emoji all over the README it show the maker is treating the code as marketing—& MS GitHub is a social media platform with algorithms.
👋🏻 Hi, Yazi author here, thanks for your interest in it!
I created an account to answer this question, for me, getting 15k stars is totally not surprising and should be quite expected since I’ve been working hard to manage the Yazi community. Let me try my best to explain where these stars are coming from and why:
I put a lot of effort into writing release notes to showcase the latest features to users, presenting this information in the best way possible - you can see these at Yazi Releases.
Yazi is a Rust app, and many people are interested in Rust, which already has a lot of excellent projects (like ripgrep, bat, fd, exa, starship, etc.), so Yazi benefits from this good reputation — especially since it genuinely delivers on its promises in README: fast, efficient, user-friendly, and customizable.
Yazi is a versatile file manager that, unlike broot, leans more towards fast file navigation rather than file management. I explained the differences in this Reddit comment.
Yazi integrates well with other tools (like Neovim and Helix), which will attract users from those platforms:
I post about each major release on Reddit, which usually gets a lot of attention, making it one of the main sources of these stars, like this one and this one.
Some Yazi users share it on other platforms, like Hacker News here and Lemmy like this post (hey! TIL about this platform, it’s awesome!).
I promote it occasionally on my personal Twitter, which usually brings good attention, like this tweet and this one.
Yazi often appears on GitHub Trending, where a lot of people look, which can also lead to some stars, such as this one - 🥇 Yazi reached number one on the Rust category. It tends to trend due to new releases or someone making a new introduction video about Yazi.
Yazi has a strong Discord community — our official Discord server has 800+ members, and many users enjoy sharing the tools they use in other servers, with Yazi being one of them. This also contributes to getting some stars. I’ve joined a lot of Discord servers and occasionally see people sharing about Yazi.
Once I have time, I’ll exchange my thoughts with users and potential users, just like I’m doing now - good communication is key to everything!
I hope this helps address your confusion or concerns. I’ve been doing my best to improve Yazi - I’ve spent almost all my free time maintaining it. These stars feel like recognition and appreciation for my efforts, so it feels pretty natural to me ;)
That’s because it works very well, and the main developer is super active (I’ve contributed and made some plugins so have interacted with them a fair bit)
I doubt that amount of stars can be achieved naturally in this short time, especially from a developer previously unknown.
the program is certainly not used by likehappy common people, this would seem complicated and scare them away
To be fair this is a terminal file manager… only a certain kind of person will be interested in the first place, and those people are likely to be more inclined to leave a star on GitHub.
Personally I believe the stars were achieved naturally but of course there’s no way to know and it never hurts to be skeptical.
To be fair this is a terminal file manager… only a certain kind of person will be interested in the first place,
that’s the point
and those people are likely to be more inclined to leave a star on GitHub.
I don’t see that connection. But you know what, here is an example.
Broot is a similar program. It has been there for longer, has been loved by many, yet it has fewer stars.
If I would know more of those like this, I would probably have more examples.
Like the other comment said yes and it lives up to it’s sparkly promises. You should check zen browsers stars, it got the same amount in like a month or two.
it gained 14k+ stars on github in a year (development started in 2023 july).
isn’t it a bit suspicious?
maybe it’s nothing, but this just caught my eye
Starhacking is a thing. When you see words like “blazing fast” & emoji all over the README it show the maker is treating the code as marketing—& MS GitHub is a social media platform with algorithms.
👋🏻 Hi, Yazi author here, thanks for your interest in it!
I created an account to answer this question, for me, getting 15k stars is totally not surprising and should be quite expected since I’ve been working hard to manage the Yazi community. Let me try my best to explain where these stars are coming from and why:
ripgrep,bat,fd,exa,starship, etc.), so Yazi benefits from this good reputation — especially since it genuinely delivers on its promises in README: fast, efficient, user-friendly, and customizable.broot, leans more towards fast file navigation rather than file management. I explained the differences in this Reddit comment.I hope this helps address your confusion or concerns. I’ve been doing my best to improve Yazi - I’ve spent almost all my free time maintaining it. These stars feel like recognition and appreciation for my efforts, so it feels pretty natural to me ;)
That’s because it works very well, and the main developer is super active (I’ve contributed and made some plugins so have interacted with them a fair bit)
I doubt that amount of stars can be achieved naturally in this short time, especially from a developer previously unknown.
the program is certainly not used by likehappy common people, this would seem complicated and scare them away
To be fair this is a terminal file manager… only a certain kind of person will be interested in the first place, and those people are likely to be more inclined to leave a star on GitHub.
Personally I believe the stars were achieved naturally but of course there’s no way to know and it never hurts to be skeptical.
that’s the point
I don’t see that connection. But you know what, here is an example.
Broot is a similar program. It has been there for longer, has been loved by many, yet it has fewer stars.
If I would know more of those like this, I would probably have more examples.
Like the other comment said yes and it lives up to it’s sparkly promises. You should check zen browsers stars, it got the same amount in like a month or two.