Windows File Explorer
Fewer than 5 people recommend it so far, so there's no written verdict. Here is what commenters said.
Why people recommend it
“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”
Show 1 more
“it has been serving me well for similar quick usecase”
Caveats and dissent
“Explorer is a pretty important piece of the experience, and its currently a nightmare.”
“windows fully locks up and becomes unusable with video CDs”
Show 2 more
“The original filebrowser (github.com/filebrowser/filebrowser) has been archived for a while now”
“It is frustrating how slow .zip (and more recently .7z) support built into Windows Explorer is.”
Often compared with
Threads where it came up
- Why Nextcloud feels slow to use 3 mentions
- WinUI 3 Performance: A Leap Forward 2 mentions
- I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great 2 mentions
- Sumatra File Manager 1 mention
- Video CDs Break Windows Explorer 1 mention
- Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop 1 mention
Also written as Windows File Explorer, File Browser, filebrowser. Data: windows-file-explorer.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 23
“Explorer is a pretty important piece of the experience, and its currently a nightmare.”
“windows fully locks up and becomes unusable with video CDs”
“OneCommander uses it, but not Explorer.”
“The original filebrowser (github.com/filebrowser/filebrowser) has been archived for a while now”
“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”
“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)”
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
“It is frustrating how slow .zip (and more recently .7z) support built into Windows Explorer is.”
I switched to xplorer2 about twenty years ago and never looked back
“Explorer.exe is far slower.”
“Explorer works fine for me”
“There are a ton of posts and bug reports about the Windows 11 File Explorer being slow.”
“the most pain points came from using Explorer”
“Its like explorer but so much faster in every single way.”
“The finder is the one thing I think Windows does marginally better with Explorer.”
“Try doing that with Windows Explorer or Finder. I think not.”
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
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’s the worst of it. Neither it nor the rest of macOS do much
“exact same performance you'd get on Windows Explorer”
https://github.com/9001/copyparty/
“but so was the original”
“I've really liked "filebrowser".”
“it has been serving me well for similar quick usecase”