{"slug": "windows-file-explorer", "name": "Windows File Explorer", "category": "files", "category_name": "Files, sync and backup", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 23, "warners": 13, "score": -7.528, "rising": 0.35, "first": "2025-11-03", "latest": "2026-10-08", "why": "I used to have Windows Explorer with the column view in the main pane and the tree view on the left pane and it was perfect", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 3, "compare": 4, "warn": 13}, "spark": [2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I used to have Windows Explorer with the column view in the main pane and the tree view on the left pane and it was perfect", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/filebrowser/filebrowser", "official_url": "", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Windows Explorer", "Windows File Explorer", "File Browser", "filebrowser"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 793494768, "item_id": 49593423, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49593423", "by": "arjie", "date": "2026-09-07", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I used to have Windows Explorer with the column view in the main pane and the tree view on the left pane and it was perfect", "excerpt": "For the main pane? I used to have Windows Explorer with the column view in the main pane and the tree view on the left pane and it was perfect. I don't really mind Nautilus with the breadcrumbs on the top and columns in the main pane. But I think simply going up and down in a Finder window is quite hard unless you navigated there manually, but I'm usually in finder because of `open ~/Folder/Path` and so I end up manu", "context": "", "use_case": "file browsing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Finder is so frustrating and has been since day one"}, {"id": 732811776, "item_id": 45800736, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45800736", "by": "accrual", "date": "2025-11-03", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've really liked \"filebrowser\".", "excerpt": "On the topic of self-hosted file manager apps, I've really liked \"filebrowser\". Pair it with Syncthing or another sync daemon and you've got a minimal self-hosted Dropbox clone. * https://github.com/filebrowser/filebrowser * https://github.com/hurlenko/filebrowser-docker", "context": "", "use_case": "Self-hosted file manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why Nextcloud feels slow to use"}, {"id": 732799488, "item_id": 45799968, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45799968", "by": "Handy-Man", "date": "2025-11-03", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it has been serving me well for similar quick usecase", "excerpt": "Have you looked into https://filebrowser.org/? While it's not drop-in replacement for Google Drive/Dropbox, it has been serving me well for similar quick usecase.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why Nextcloud feels slow to use"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 800134112, "item_id": 50008382, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50008382", "by": "wronex", "date": "2026-10-08", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "Explorer is a pretty important piece of the experience, and its currently a nightmare.", "excerpt": "Cool! Windows 11 really needs a better file browser. Will give this a try for sure! Currently using Explorer without the Windows 11 skin. Also tried FilePilot and TotalCommander. But what I really want is Windows explorer with tabs; more or less. It would be interesting to hear from a Microsoft engineer about what\u2019s going on in there. Explorer is a pretty important piece of the experience, and its currently a nightma", "context": "Windows 11 user", "use_case": "file browsing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Sumatra File Manager"}, {"id": 797923904, "item_id": 49870244, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49870244", "by": "snailmailman", "date": "2026-09-27", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "windows fully locks up and becomes unusable with video CDs", "excerpt": "I ran into this bug myself recently when trying to digitize a family collection of old CDs. Lots of family photos and videos, that were backed up in a mix of file formats and disc formats. I used Linux for most of the process after figuring out that windows fully locks up and becomes unusable with video CDs. I ended up simply skipping most of the video CDs because the format is simply awful. In my case most of them w", "context": "", "use_case": "reading video CDs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Video CDs Break Windows Explorer"}, {"id": 794876226, "item_id": 49679764, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49679764", "by": "skidoodle", "date": "2026-09-13", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "The original filebrowser (github.com/filebrowser/filebrowser) has been archived for a while now", "excerpt": "The original filebrowser (github.com/filebrowser/filebrowser) has been archived for a while now, and Nextcloud is way too bloated for just browsing and sharing files on a disk. So I made my own replacement. It's still early so expect some rough edges and bugs, but I've been daily-driving it on my setup and it gets the job done. Repo: https://github.com/skidoodle/filebrowser", "context": "", "use_case": "file browsing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: I made an alternative to the archived filebrowser"}, {"id": 776902704, "item_id": 48556419, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48556419", "by": "jonathanlydall", "date": "2026-06-16", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "It is frustrating how slow .zip (and more recently .7z) support built into Windows Explorer is.", "excerpt": "It is frustrating how slow .zip (and more recently .7z) support built into Windows Explorer is. This is a great article on why it's so unreasonably slow to modify these archives: https://textslashplain.com/2021/06/02/leaky-abstractions/ But it doesn't seem to explain why it's so much slower at regular extraction.", "context": "", "use_case": "Zip archive handling", "switched_from": "", "story": "The time the x86 emulator team found code so bad they fixed it during emulation"}]}], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["file browsing", "reading video cds", "file management", "zip archive handling", "windows file manager", "file hosting in container"], "compared": [{"slug": "filepilot", "name": "FilePilot", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "macos", "name": "macOS", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "finder", "name": "Finder", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "microsoft-windows", "name": "Microsoft Windows", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "total-commander", "name": "Total Commander", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45798681", "title": "Why Nextcloud feels slow to use", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48139704", "title": "WinUI 3 Performance: A Leap Forward", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46566465", "title": "I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49999171", "title": "Sumatra File Manager", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49859759", "title": "Video CDs Break Windows Explorer", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49825642", "title": "Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 2, "warn": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2025-12": {"compare": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 1, "warn": 2, "compare": 1}, "2026-02": {"warn": 2}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {"warn": 2}, "2026-06": {"warn": 1}, "2026-07": {"warn": 1, "compare": 1}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1, "warn": 2, "compare": 1}, "2026-10": {"warn": 1}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "quotes": [{"id": 800134112, "item_id": 50008382, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50008382", "by": "wronex", "date": "2026-10-08", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "Explorer is a pretty important piece of the experience, and its currently a nightmare.", "excerpt": "Cool! Windows 11 really needs a better file browser. Will give this a try for sure! Currently using Explorer without the Windows 11 skin. Also tried FilePilot and TotalCommander. But what I really want is Windows explorer with tabs; more or less. It would be interesting to hear from a Microsoft engineer about what\u2019s going on in there. Explorer is a pretty important piece of the experience, and its currently a nightma", "context": "Windows 11 user", "use_case": "file browsing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Sumatra File Manager"}, {"id": 797923904, "item_id": 49870244, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49870244", "by": "snailmailman", "date": "2026-09-27", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "windows fully locks up and becomes unusable with video CDs", "excerpt": "I ran into this bug myself recently when trying to digitize a family collection of old CDs. Lots of family photos and videos, that were backed up in a mix of file formats and disc formats. I used Linux for most of the process after figuring out that windows fully locks up and becomes unusable with video CDs. I ended up simply skipping most of the video CDs because the format is simply awful. In my case most of them w", "context": "", "use_case": "reading video CDs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Video CDs Break Windows Explorer"}, {"id": 797298000, "item_id": 49831125, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49831125", "by": "uxd2", "date": "2026-09-24", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "OneCommander uses it, but not Explorer.", "excerpt": "I am surprised that Windows doesn't have the mentioned middle-of-name ellipsis. OneCommander uses it, but not Explorer. BitCommander had even smarter trimming prioritizing numbers and words reducing to letter plus dot http://bit-commander.com/GIF/bit-commander-file-name-shortening.gif", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop"}, {"id": 794876226, "item_id": 49679764, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49679764", "by": "skidoodle", "date": "2026-09-13", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "The original filebrowser (github.com/filebrowser/filebrowser) has been archived for a while now", "excerpt": "The original filebrowser (github.com/filebrowser/filebrowser) has been archived for a while now, and Nextcloud is way too bloated for just browsing and sharing files on a disk. So I made my own replacement. It's still early so expect some rough edges and bugs, but I've been daily-driving it on my setup and it gets the job done. Repo: https://github.com/skidoodle/filebrowser", "context": "", "use_case": "file browsing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: I made an alternative to the archived filebrowser"}, {"id": 793494768, "item_id": 49593423, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49593423", "by": "arjie", "date": "2026-09-07", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I used to have Windows Explorer with the column view in the main pane and the tree view on the left pane and it was perfect", "excerpt": "For the main pane? I used to have Windows Explorer with the column view in the main pane and the tree view on the left pane and it was perfect. I don't really mind Nautilus with the breadcrumbs on the top and columns in the main pane. But I think simply going up and down in a Finder window is quite hard unless you navigated there manually, but I'm usually in finder because of `open ~/Folder/Path` and so I end up manu", "context": "", "use_case": "file browsing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Finder is so frustrating and has been since day one"}, {"id": 786030321, "item_id": 49126895, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49126895", "by": "hn_submit", "date": "2026-07-31", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "can't see any speed difference between a program written in Pascal (Total Commander, which I use every day) and one written in C++ (Windows Explorer)", "excerpt": "I, for one, can't see any speed difference between a program written in Pascal (Total Commander, which I use every day) and one written in C++ (Windows Explorer).", "context": "", "use_case": "file management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI"}, {"id": 780867360, "item_id": 48804210, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48804210", "by": "pjmlp", "date": "2026-07-06", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "", "excerpt": "The new Windows Explorer uses WinRT/WinUI, with its AddRef/Release all over the place. https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/microsofts-windows-11-ui-is-about-to-get-much-more-responsive.348985/ And yes, it sucks, https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/discussions/11096", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fast Software, the Best Software"}, {"id": 776902704, "item_id": 48556419, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48556419", "by": "jonathanlydall", "date": "2026-06-16", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "It is frustrating how slow .zip (and more recently .7z) support built into Windows Explorer is.", "excerpt": "It is frustrating how slow .zip (and more recently .7z) support built into Windows Explorer is. This is a great article on why it's so unreasonably slow to modify these archives: https://textslashplain.com/2021/06/02/leaky-abstractions/ But it doesn't seem to explain why it's so much slower at regular extraction.", "context": "", "use_case": "Zip archive handling", "switched_from": "", "story": "The time the x86 emulator team found code so bad they fixed it during emulation"}, {"id": 770332785, "item_id": 48145799, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48145799", "by": "taffydavid", "date": "2026-05-15", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I switched to xplorer2 about twenty years ago and never looked back", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "WinUI 3 Performance: A Leap Forward"}, {"id": 770315088, "item_id": 48144693, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48144693", "by": "boromi", "date": "2026-05-14", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "Explorer.exe is far slower.", "excerpt": "Explorer.exe is far slower. It was one of the reasons I switched to macos after being a hardcore microsoft fan for many years. explorer would be so slow with fodlers that has a large number of files it would darastically impede my workflow. Macos is far superior IMO than windows when it comes to daily use efficiency.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "WinUI 3 Performance: A Leap Forward"}, {"id": 762429794, "item_id": 47651862, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47651862", "by": "dangus", "date": "2026-04-05", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Explorer works fine for me", "excerpt": "I also use Everything. But I'm not sure how Windows Search not being the best has much to do with the system's overall RAM usage. Explorer works fine for me but File Pilot does look cool. I'll give it a try. (Good luck replacing Finder on Mac, is that even possible?) I only use Windows for desktop and if I was clean installing I'd probably switch it to Linux. My laptop is Linux then I share a macOS system with my par", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11"}, {"id": 754658576, "item_id": 47166161, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47166161", "by": "snozolli", "date": "2026-02-26", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "There are a ton of posts and bug reports about the Windows 11 File Explorer being slow.", "excerpt": "There are a ton of posts and bug reports about the Windows 11 File Explorer being slow. Personally, after a few minutes of use, changing directories can take on the order of 20-30 seconds! The slowdown appears to be due to XAML Islands, which allow legacy code to use modern MS UI stuff. https://www.techindeep.com/why-is-windows-explorer-slow-72894", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown"}, {"id": 749788019, "item_id": 46861751, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46861751", "by": "Mabusto", "date": "2026-02-02", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "the most pain points came from using Explorer", "excerpt": "Literally installing Arch right now as I read this. Same deal, been using windows as my daily driver all my life but have been running Linux servers since late 90s (and did daily drive RedHat back in the day). My work env was just VS Code + WSL and I realized the most pain points came from using Explorer and trying to admin the machine with the fractured landscape of sys admin tools. For me it became very obvious tha", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload"}, {"id": 748816481, "item_id": 46801030, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46801030", "by": "smusamashah", "date": "2026-01-28", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "Its like explorer but so much faster in every single way.", "excerpt": "Please try https://filepilot.tech/ Its like explorer but so much faster in every single way. I have it pinned on the taskbar, it launches quickly than a new explorer window. Main one is no-multiline support atm. Which means that the icon view does not show full file name, list view etc are perfectly fine though. Current problems I have with it are no native zip support, which means you must use 7-zip, winrar etc and ", "context": "", "use_case": "Windows file manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux"}, {"id": 747698881, "item_id": 46731180, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46731180", "by": "mlrtime", "date": "2026-01-23", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "The finder is the one thing I think Windows does marginally better with Explorer.", "excerpt": "Switched from Windows to Macos years ago after work gave me a macbook pro. As life long ThinkPad red nipple guy, I love it. The finder is the one thing I think Windows does marginally better with Explorer.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bugs Apple Loves"}, {"id": 745308704, "item_id": 46581794, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46581794", "by": "nobody9999", "date": "2026-01-11", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "Try doing that with Windows Explorer or Finder. I think not.", "excerpt": ">Windows reads the drive fine whereas Linux gives an error that has no obvious solution. And it can't be solved by right clicking the drive in the explorer and selecting \"take ownership and mount\" or something like that, it requires using an unfamiliar command into the terminal to fix the problem. And that's basically the case with most file-permission errors that I encounter on Linux systems. That definitely seems l", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great"}, {"id": 745207744, "item_id": 46575484, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46575484", "by": "Kye", "date": "2026-01-11", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Most explorer issues are really file system issues. It's touchy. chkdsk in offline repair mode usually fixes it. For the rest, clear the thumbnail cache. The ways Windows breaks are different from the ways Linux breaks, but there are still ways to fix it. Most of the rest are solved with one or two commands, and it's usually the same two: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/use-the-system-file-checker-tool-to-r", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great"}, {"id": 739083923, "item_id": 46192745, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46192745", "by": "cosmic_cheese", "date": "2025-12-08", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I have concerns too, but the file manager on macOS is not among them. The Finder has barely changed since its OS X 10.2 incarnation over two decades ago, except for gaining features (many of which were demanded by power users). A few settings need toggling on a fresh install (turning on status bar and path bar are musts, as is ~/Library visibility), but that\u2019s the worst of it. Neither it nor the rest of macOS do much", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bad Dye Job"}, {"id": 738841410, "item_id": 46177588, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46177588", "by": "jeroenhd", "date": "2025-12-06", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "exact same performance you'd get on Windows Explorer", "excerpt": "Looking at the source code or copy-item (assuming the author is using a recent version of PowerShell) at https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/blob/master/src/Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Management/commands/management/Navigation.cs#L3708 which calls https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/blob/master/src/System.Management.Automation/engine/SessionStateContainer.cs, there seems to be quite a bit of (non-OS) logi", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Copy-Item is slower than File Explorer"}, {"id": 736928513, "item_id": 46058032, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46058032", "by": "yjftsjthsd-h", "date": "2025-11-26", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "https://github.com/9001/copyparty/", "context": "", "use_case": "File hosting in container", "switched_from": "", "story": "Copyparty, the FOSS file server [video]"}, {"id": 732923185, "item_id": 45807699, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45807699", "by": "iN7h33nD", "date": "2025-11-03", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "but so was the original", "excerpt": "Same. Just recently switch over to filebrowser-quantum. Can\u2019t quite endorse it yet, but it\u2019s promising so far (setup in a docker compose was a bit like wack-a-mole, but so was the original) https://github.com/gtsteffaniak/filebrowser", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why Nextcloud feels slow to use"}, {"id": 732811776, "item_id": 45800736, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45800736", "by": "accrual", "date": "2025-11-03", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've really liked \"filebrowser\".", "excerpt": "On the topic of self-hosted file manager apps, I've really liked \"filebrowser\". Pair it with Syncthing or another sync daemon and you've got a minimal self-hosted Dropbox clone. * https://github.com/filebrowser/filebrowser * https://github.com/hurlenko/filebrowser-docker", "context": "", "use_case": "Self-hosted file manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why Nextcloud feels slow to use"}, {"id": 732799488, "item_id": 45799968, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45799968", "by": "Handy-Man", "date": "2025-11-03", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it has been serving me well for similar quick usecase", "excerpt": "Have you looked into https://filebrowser.org/? While it's not drop-in replacement for Google Drive/Dropbox, it has been serving me well for similar quick usecase.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why Nextcloud feels slow to use"}]}