Select File From Directory

ComfyUI's built-in loaders only see its own folders. Select File From Directory breaks that wall: it lists files from any folder on your machine, recursively, filters them however you like, and hands you back the paths. If you've ever had to copy a batch of images into ComfyUI/input just so a loader would see them, this is the node that makes that chore obsolete.

It's built around a live, dynamic dropdown. You type an absolute folder_path, optionally narrow with extensions and a filter, and the file_name dropdown fills itself in with everything that matches. The mechanism is a small client-server dance: a frontend script watches the folder/extension/filter widgets, and on any change it asks ComfyUI's server (a /sg-nodes/list_files endpoint) to re-scan the directory. The server walks the folder and all subdirectories, applies your filters, and sends back a sorted list that the dropdown swaps in instantly. Change a filter, and the list updates without touching anything else.

The inputs that matter

• folder_path - absolute path to scan. This one has to be real: the server checks os.path.isdir and returns an empty list for anything that doesn't exist or isn't a directory.
• extensions - comma-separated, e.g. .png, .jpg. Leading dots are optional (it adds them for you). Empty means everything.
• filter_type - none, contains, or regex, applied on top of the extension filter. contains does a case-insensitive substring match against the relative path; regex does a case-insensitive regex search.
• file_name - the populated dropdown.

Three outputs: FULL_PATH (absolute), RELATIVE_PATH (relative to the folder, subfolders included), and FILE_NAME (just the base name). Hand any of them to nodes that accept path strings.

Where it earns its keep

Batch pipelines are the obvious use: point it at a directory of video frames or dataset images, wire FULL_PATH into a loader that takes path strings, and the whole batch flows without moving files around. The RELATIVE_PATH output is a nice touch for things like metadata or caption files that need to match the folder structure.

Two gotchas from the source. First, the node only emits real output when both folder_path and file_name are set - otherwise it returns empty strings, silently. Second, the recursive scan has no exclusions, so pointing it at a huge directory (or a folder full of node_modules) makes the dropdown refresh slow. Keep it pointed at folders you actually want to list. And remember the paths are served relative to the folder you typed, so if you move the folder after selecting a file, the stored selection goes stale.

Install

Part of comfyui-sg-nodes by sebagallo. ComfyUI Manager → search comfyui-sg-nodes, or:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/sebagallo/comfyui-sg-nodes

Restart ComfyUI; it's under SGNodes/Utilities. No model downloads, no extra dependencies.