I think it really depends on your specific use case.

For me, it has completely replaced ranger — I initially developed it to replace my ranger, and its original name was ranger-rs, but then I realized that was too long for frequent type, so I changed it to yazi :D

👋🏻 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:

• Yazi is undergoing very active development, with an average of at least 1 commit per day (currently 765 commits over 451 days, averaging about 1.7 commits per day).
• 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:
  • Neovim plugins like https://github.com/mikavilpas/yazi.nvim
  • Helix + Zellij integration https://yazi-rs.github.io/docs/tips#helix-with-zellij
• Yazi has a great plugin ecosystem — you can check out all the community plugins at https://yazi-rs.github.io/docs/resources and https://github.com/AnirudhG07/awesome-yazi
• 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.
• Yazi occasionally appears in tech blogs or videos, such as this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one, which also brings in a lot of stars.
• 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 ;)