Best File Explorer For Windows
Download File Manager (Free, in-app purchases) 5. Another option that you have for a file explorer on iPhone, is File Master. The app is very well rounded, and offers a lot of the features offered by other apps. The interface of the app is a little dated, but the features are very well baked in. Apr 23, 2019 The File Explorer is the default file browser in Windows operating system. The File Browser has remained mostly unchanged in the latest Windows 10 as well. We all use the File Explorer every day, but many of us don’t know some of the hidden or lesser-known features of the File Explorer.
Best Alternative File Managers For Windows FreeCommander: FreeCommander is an apt replacement for Windows Explorer. Explorer: Explorer is another useful and efficient file management application. Xplorer2: Xplorer2 is a similar file manager which requires you to pay for it. Directory Opus.
Introduction A file manager provides a convenient way for end users to work with file systems and perform various operations on files and folders such as create, edit, rename, copy, delete, modify file attributes, compare folders etc. While Windows Explorer provides a fair amount of simple file management activities, a dedicated file manager helps you to keep things unsophisticated and gives you various tools out of the box to manage a large number of files at a time.
File managers give you faster and easier management of files and folders on your PC. The various special features that I'm looking forward to in a file manager are Dual panes, Tabbed interface, Bookmarks, History, Archive handling, Advanced File Search, MultiRename, Folder Size Enumeration, Folder Compare and Synchronize, FTP support, File viewer, File sorting, File splitter, Filtered view, Keyboard shortcuts, Easy access to system folders and more. So here are top 5 products that I've found after months of testing. Their interface, features and customization are among the best and curated accordingly in each of the products. Rated Products. No extensive customization capabilities, Less powerful features. More File Managers Honourable Mentions If you aren't satisfied with any of the best products curated above, it doesn't hurt to know more options listed below.
Modern interface - Probably the most modern and stylish interface that I've seen. Work Folder - If you set a folder as an work folder.
You can go to that folder with shortcut key right away. Also copy/move/extract files/folders to an work folder with only two step keyboard shortcut. Innovative Folder Tree - The hierarchical representing let's you see all the sub-contents at a glance. Colors - You can customize colors for file listings and folder free.
Different colors for various file types lets you to easily distinguish files at a glance. Advanced Built-in text editor - One of the best text editors I've seen, with syntax highlighting.
Shortcut menus for USB flash drives - Makes starting applications very easy right from your USB drive. Portable - No installation or uninstallation required. Linux styled interface may not please everyone. Multifunctional address bar - Specifying folder names and visual filters and for running windows applications. Auto-completion - Paths and other frequently typed information.
Dockable Thumbnail bar - To preview images, html and office applications. No hotkey customization and uses windows search. Free version limited.
Ribbon styled tabbed explorer for Win 7 & 8. Drive usage analysis chart. Conditional selecting - filtering, searching, selecting. Is just an enhancement to the Windows 8 explorer R.I.P File Managers These file managers were once great, but are no longer developed.
They continue to work on latest versions of Windows, but won't be featured in the main review. (Last Update: Jul 27 '09) Not Recommended These file managers were tested but falls short in features and overall usability. They are either too simple or too restricted in features for daily use. (No longer featured on home site.). (Not yet out of alpha stage, but a promising new file manager.). (Claims to be the fastest, but not really a file manager). (Too simple, not really a choice).
(project dead). (project dead) Other File Managers to be reviewed These File Mangers were brought up in the user comments section. I'm currently reviewing them or have finished reviewing and waiting to be listed in the main article during the next review update. Please be patient. Notes File managers that were written as 32-bit applications will generally work on 64-bit Windows, but functionality will be limited in three ways:. Shell extensions (i.e., file context menu entries) of 64-bit applications won't appear in a 32-bit file manager.
32-bit file managers will not be able to access the 'system32' directory of a 64-bit Windows installation; they will be deflected to the 'sysWOW64' directory instead. 32-bit programs have no full access to the control panel. Related Products and Links. Editor This software category is maintained by volunteer editor George.J.
Registered members can contact the editor with any comments or questions they might have by. Please rate this article. I am looking for a program to help organize my folders. They are already organized, but there are thousands of VB6 folders. I am 75 so my memory is crap. I am looking for a Bookmark manager where I can have a tree on the left, which I break up into Categories, and sub categories.
If any of you have rolled your sleeves up, and fully utilized Firefox's web bookmarks(Favorites), you will find it is pretty close to perfect. (I was a senior analyst in IT for 20 years, and I could not come up with a better favorite manager if my life depended on it). If I could find something similar to organize my (file manager) folder bookmarks, I would be a very happy (old) man.
I just tried Explorer's Bookmarks, but it is too restrictive (difficult to create sub folders, and to correct them). If anyone knows of a file manager that has a decent bookmark manager built in, that would be ideal.
(I assume that any standalone Bookmark manager, would be opening up Windows Explorer, which shortens my life every time I use it). Thanks, Rob. or to post comments. EF Commander older FREE version is still available from Softpedia. All of my previous frustrations with file sharing between win XP and more recent Win OS's, have been solved by that (zippy light reliable) program. For those having problems with file sharing between Win OS's you may care to read my post here - Rob PS I have the latest version of your top rated program, and just tried it to do the same router thumb drive trick, and it stuttered, stalled, nearly froze my old XP Pro PC. (mind you that was on the router test, which practically all File Managers have failed to handle on my PC).
or to post comments. Master Commander seems it is no longer being developed. Links are all down. Version available from other reputable download sites that I could find is version 1.1. If anyone is interested in the latest Master Commander version 1.2.787.1 feel free to contact me I have clean copy. Personal note, if you search the web for 'Master Commander 1.2.787.1' you will get a hit to many sites but the procedure to get the file might be a bit questionable most are Russian. I recommend caution, so be careful.
Disclaimer- Not all Russian sites bad or questionable. or to post comments. Q-Dir all the way for quick navigation. When I need to do some advanced things like searching and multi-renaming, then either of the TotalCommander clones (FreeCommander, MultiCommander, DoubleCommander, etc etc) do the job effectively.
I really like Unreal Commander, but something this review didn't mention is that when using some tools like multi-rename it forces a nag screen for a few seconds, and requires the user to prompt out of it before showing the tool. Not a huge issue, but annoying when a large portion of the time spent using the program is for renaming file/folders. or to post comments. If you're just looking for a way around Windows Explorer's fixed black and white interface glare, boredom, i have bad news for you. NONE of the apps on this page fix that.
Nexus comes nearest: with tweaking you can get any color combo you like. No desktop link that i could find, and its help as usual!
is online only and NON-SEARCHABLE doh!. But that's trivial compared to all of their common omission: none of them even touch individual folder appearances. So while you can tweak Nexus to your taste, when you click on a folder from within it, you're back to black and white Microsh.t. CAN ANYBODY SHARE A WAY TO MODIFY THE COLORS OF INDIVIDUAL FOLDERS?
and please, don't tell me about Themes- few offer this particular feature, and those that do. Well, i've never managed to get them to actually work.
The whole approach is a real mess. August 2015 postscript: Found one. A43 probably won't please the Power Users as it looks simpler. And its top menu bar is fixed white. But its twin panes are easily color and font customizable.
That sounds simple but it's a feature most coders can't be bothered to include. Anyway- if you get sore eyes easily, A43 is probably about as eye-friendly as it gets. There is a major cavet, probably on all these file managers. If you start globally, say with A43 and drill down to an individual folder, it'll appear in A43 colored how you like, but if you reach an individual folder through something like RocketDock, or Launchy, or Search, you'll get the old black and white Windows Explorer window, even if A43 or? is still running. Less than perfect but that's Windows. or to post comments.
Is the file manager included with Windows 10, which this covered in more detail. While Microsoft has enhanced it in Windows 10, the default File Explorer still leaves some things to be desired. There are a few alternative file-management software packages that you can add to Windows 10, to add features that aren’t in File Explorer.
Here are some of the best alternatives to Explorer. XYplorerFree XYplorerFree is a portable file management software package. It has two versions, and you can add the freeware one to Windows 10 from. Click the DOWNLOAD tab there to save its Zip file. Then you can run its setup wizard from the Zip without extracting it.
When you’ve installed it, open its window like in the snapshot below. The first thing to note about this file management software is that it has folder tabs. Click the New Tab “+” button on the right of the tab bar to open a tab that you can open another folder in. Then you can open folders in multiple tabs, which is a big advantage compared to File Explorer. Another good feature of XYplorer is the tree window on the left-hand side of the display. This highlights your current selected folder path with a green line. You can also customize that line color by pressing F9, selecting Styles, and clicking the Current Tree Path box to open a palette.
Choose an alternative color from there and press OK to apply it. The tree window also has a handy Mini Tree option. That option cleans up the tree display by hiding all the folder branches that you haven’t selected in XYplorer. You can click View Mini Tree to switch on the Mini Tree mode as below. Also note that this file management software color codes file types. Press the Enable Color Filters button on the toolbar to switch on the color code filters as shown below.
These filters highlight txt files green, html files blue, image files purple, and audio files orange. You can customize the colors by pressing F9 and selecting Color Filters on the Configuration window–double-click a filter to open a palette and choose a new color for it. File filter options are also a great addition to the toolbar. Click the arrow beside the Toggle Visual Filter button to open the submenu shown below. There, you can select filters for text, video, audio, image, and office files. For example, selecting Image Files will filter out any files in a folder that don’t fit under the image category. XYplorerFree can also tell you how many files of each type are within a folder.
Click the Type Stats and Filter button on the toolbar as shown below. That opens a small menu that lists how many files of each format are included in the folder. The Dual Pane option on the toolbar also comes in handy. It effectively opens a second folder pane in XYplorerFree. Select a tab and then the Dual Pane button to open the folder in a second pane as shown below. XYplorerFree is also packed with customization options.
Best File Explorer For Windows 10
Select Tools on the menu bar to open the menu as shown directly below. Then you can select Customize Toolbar to add or remove buttons from the toolbar. Alternatively, you can select Customize List and Customize Tree to further configure the tree window on the left and the file lists. The Configuration window also has extensive customization options. Press the Configuration button on the toolbar to open it. This lets you customize colors, fonts, tabs, previews, tags, and file operations from that window.
Q-Dir Q-Dir is another good alternative to File Explorer. The software’s main novelty is that it splits the window into up to four panes so you can browse up to four folders simultaneously. To install Q-Dir, to open the Q-Dir Softpedia page, where you can download its installer. Then run through the setup wizard to add it to Windows 10, and open the window below.
The window opens with four folder panes open. So you can now open four separate folders–one in each of the panels. That can be quite handy when you need to drag files from one folder to another. At the top of the window there are panel options for you to select. You can change the number of panels displayed–the default arrangement is four, but you can reduce that to three, two, or one by selecting the 3-Dir, 2-Dir, or 1-Dir buttons as shown below.
You can also select different panel arrangements. To add a tree-view sidebar to the left of the window, select Extras and Tree-View. Then you can select One 4 all to add the sidebar to the window below. That’s a tree-view sidebar for all the panels. You can use it to open new folders in each panel. In addition to its panels, Q-Dir includes folder tabs. To find the option to open folder tabs, select Edit and Open.
You can then open a new tab in the selected panel, as shown below. You can right-click a tab to open its context menu, which includes further tab options. At the bottom of each Q-Dir panel there’s a status bar with some extra options on it. Click the RUN button there to open a menu with a variety of handy system tool shortcuts on it. There, you can open the Registry Editor, Notepad, or Command Prompt. To add more shortcuts to the system tool, press the Add button on the menu.
Then press Add again to choose a system tool or software shortcut. You can also customize Q-Dir’s color scheme by selecting Extras Colors & Design to open the submenu below. There, you can choose from a variety of alternative background and text colors. For example, a neon color has been selected in the snapshot below. Click Colors on that submenu to open the Options window, where you can further customize the color scheme by selecting a filter and pressing the palette button.
Both Q-Dir and XYplorerFree make it clear exactly what’s missing from the default Windows 10 File Explorer. They include numerous options you won’t find in File Explorer, making them both better alternative file managers.