[HN Gopher] File Pilot: A file explorer built for speed with a m...
___________________________________________________________________
File Pilot: A file explorer built for speed with a modern, robust
interface
Author : vjekoslav
Score : 287 points
Date : 2025-02-18 16:24 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (filepilot.tech)
(TXT) w3m dump (filepilot.tech)
| SanJacobs wrote:
| With everything hand-written from scratch in C, just like God
| intended. Great work.
| antonvs wrote:
| Proof that the answer to the problem of evil is "Yeah, so
| what?"
| L0th4r wrote:
| Looks great. I ran a test browsing a folder of pdfs but it does
| not look like File Pilot likes previwing pdfs with Acrobat set as
| default pdf viewer; no preview/thumbnail shown for pdfs.
| vjekoslav wrote:
| PDF previews are not supported yet, but they are planned.
| webdevver wrote:
| being able to hold down Ctrl-T, and just have it open tabs at the
| speed of the typematic rate is such a joy. it is really honestly
| disgusting (and I don't use that word lightly) how long it takes
| for explorer.exe to open a tab, open a context menu, or (god
| forbid!) open a window. genuine breath of fresh air to have a
| file explorer that isn't hot garbage.
| Marsymars wrote:
| > being able to hold down Ctrl-T, and just have it open tabs at
| the speed of the typematic rate is such a joy.
|
| The Opera web browser used to do this before the switch to
| Chromium. I don't know that any modern browser has this
| performance capability.
| gervwyk wrote:
| Please make a mac version.
| vjekoslav wrote:
| I will.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| Found plenty of screencaps on the Handmade page [1] and it looks
| refreshingly snappy ... and under 2MB in size!
|
| Excellent work, OP. Complements to the chef.
|
| [1] https://filepilot.handmade.network
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I was at Handmade Seattle in 2023 and the auditorium cheered
| when he was showing off the prototype and did a file search in
| <1 second, lol.
| quyleanh wrote:
| Just wow. Seeing the demo, I just hope Microsoft can do somthing
| like that with current Explorer app. It's good now but still can
| improve more with something like File Pilot
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| > I just hope Microsoft can do something like that with current
| Explorer app
|
| They can start by making explorer startup in less than 5
| seconds. Let's face it, Microsoft devs don't care about
| performance and probably never will.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Explorer is slow because it's extensible. All the thumbnails
| and extra stuff in the context menu is what slows it down.
| There's some pathological cases like "opening a folder with
| an MP3 file in" which puts it into scanning all the files for
| ID3 tags.
|
| Fpilot is a great example of how it's possible to make
| something MUCH faster by limiting the feature set.
|
| (also some of the NTFS APIs are horribly slow for extended
| information)
| sirwhinesalot wrote:
| File Pilot supports explorer extensions... There's an
| actual animation showing it on the website. What do you
| mean by "limiting the feature set"?
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| > It's good now
|
| Are you able to clarify what it does better now than it did 10,
| 15, 20 years ago?
| sureIy wrote:
| I don't know if Windows Explorer has regressed since Vista, but
| back then I remember it doing everything I wanted and more,
| down to viewing and editing MP3 and JPG metadata in some panel,
| filtering, grouping, smart searches, etc.
|
| What else do you need from it?
|
| I don't know the state now because I've since switched to
| macOS, which has Finder, an absolute toy in comparison (other
| than QuickLook and Column View)
| sigmonsays wrote:
| Please make a linux version!
| V__ wrote:
| It looks really great. Is there something similar for Linux?
| exceptione wrote:
| KDE Dolphin.
| RachelF wrote:
| Double commander?
| Cloudef wrote:
| Not really, linux doesn't really have a good file manager.
| Dolphin probably gets you closest. I'd like to scratch the
| itch, but I don't have time to start such a project at the
| moment.
| Sweepi wrote:
| Really, dolphin is best? Using Dolphin on Nobara right now,
| and the pinned items in the left pane are not there in the
| systems "file open" dialog, the dialog does not even have
| breadcrumbs(!!). Or am I holding it wrong?
| exceptione wrote:
| You have the option of what applications will show the pin.
| Right click on an item and you can choose if this is global
| or app-specific (in this case dolphin, but you can indeed
| pin per app!).
|
| The file open dialog is likely the "portal", which works
| securely across sandboxed applications. Every Linux does
| have a portal implementation.
|
| In KDE this portal has quite some features, but it could be
| that some are not available, possibly spec-related or
| security concern. You can look in the settings though.
|
| EDIT: pinned items are available in the desktop-portal. I
| have not looked into breadcrumbs, but I like the location
| bar to be editable straight away anyways.
| kps wrote:
| Might be https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=406450 as
| in https://bugsfiles.kde.org/attachment.cgi?id=158755
|
| tl;dr There's a 'filename' version and a 'URL' version of
| the dialog. Some things are incorrectly missing from the
| 'filename' version because they're _internally_
| implemented using URLs.
| willaaam wrote:
| Please, I beg you dear developer, replace my stupid MacOS finder
| with your superpowers!
| CharlesW wrote:
| There are a few good Finder alternatives for macOS, including
| Path Finder, ForkLift, Commander One, and Double Commander
| (FOSS).
| kstrauser wrote:
| I ended up with ForkLift after much trial and error.
| Commander One was nice. Double Commander is also great but
| not "native" on Mac. Path Finder is super powerful but has a
| rep for being overcomplicated and also crashy, but I can't
| personally vouch because it wasn't quite what I was looking
| for anyway.
| fatboy wrote:
| Forklift is the one I settled on as well. I had the
| experience you describe with Path Finder before and finally
| I gave up.
|
| Forklift has a couple of things that annoy me daily though.
| Often I will have to refresh a pane to see a file I know
| has recently been added. Eg in downloads. I may even have
| navigated to downloads after the download finished and it's
| still not visible until I refresh.
|
| The other is that it doesn't reuse existing tabs if I
| "reveal in finder" or whatever, so after a while there's a
| million tabs open, most pointing to the same directory.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Oof. Those hit close to home for me, too.
| code_biologist wrote:
| Path Finder went to a subscription-only model, no way to
| outright purchase a license sadly.
| lylejantzi3rd wrote:
| The quality of Path Finder went downhill many years ago as
| well.
| linsomniac wrote:
| What is the deal with MacOS file dialogs? A couple days ago I
| was trying to open a project in Cursor, and I click on "home"
| and my name, and then it has the directories grouped by year
| created. So I type in the search box, but it's now searching
| some other context, like the whole system or something? I don't
| even have tons of files/directories in my home directory "ls |
| wc -l" gives 36.
|
| It's like they designed it while watching High Fidelity: "I
| sorted my albums autobiographically. So if I'm looking for
| <this album> I have to remember that it's under albums I bought
| for a girl but ended up not giving to her." "That sounds like a
| great idea!"
| kstrauser wrote:
| If you start searching, I think it defaults to scope "This
| Mac". That's probably right for most cases. If you want to
| open a Word doc named Fnord, you'd kind of hope Finder
| would... find it... wherever it was. But you can also click
| next to "This Mac" to switch it the context of the directory
| you're in.
|
| Also, cmd-shift-G (the Finder shortcut for "Go to Folder...")
| will let you start typing a path.
| sureIy wrote:
| > If you start searching, I think it defaults to scope
| "This Mac".
|
| Correct, and it's the first setting I change.
|
| Finder > Settings > Advanced > When performing a search:
| "Search the Current Folder"
| wpm wrote:
| Sounds like it was sorted by "most recent" (not the column,
| but the view mode).
|
| That said the Open dialog is a sad sack stand in for even the
| flawed Finder. 20 year Mac user here: I developed the muscle
| memory to just have a Finder window open to the file I want
| so I can drag and drop from that into the Open dialog.
| sureIy wrote:
| > then it has the directories grouped by year created
|
| That's a setting you set.
|
| Right click on empty space > uncheck "Use groups"
|
| Or in that context menu, select "Show View Options" and
| customize it to your liking. My liking is "Group by kind"
| (folders to the top) then "Sort by name"
| tiborsaas wrote:
| I've found this article recently: https://www.xda-
| developers.com/4-finder-alternatives-on-maco...
| lylejantzi3rd wrote:
| Hahaha, that's great. Halfway down this article, there's a
| link to an old article on File Pilot.
| keyle wrote:
| I don't think it's technically possible to even replace Finder.
| If you type "open ." in terminal, it will open in Finder.
|
| There is not an optional "set this as default" like browsers.
| Something we should really push Apple to do. Finder is trash.
| asyncze wrote:
| Is it not possible to alias the open command?
| kstrauser wrote:
| It's possible to get pretty close. For example, Forklift's
| instructions (go to https://binarynights.com/manual, search
| for "Default File Viewer") nearly replaces it, except you
| still have a Finder icon in the dock.
| spython wrote:
| ForkLift is really good.
| vjekoslav wrote:
| If everything goes well with Windows and the project becomes
| financially stable, a macOS version is planned.
| nguyenkien wrote:
| Mac user tend to buy premium apps more, so you should just
| made for mac anyway.
| darek wrote:
| On macOS my daily driver is Nimble Commander
| (https://magnumbytes.com/). Super fast, powerful and inspired
| by Total Commander. It used to be paid but now is free and open
| source so give it a try. It deserves to be better known.
| thecrumb wrote:
| Windows only? Why would I use (buy) this over DirectoryOpus? That
| said would love to see it on Linux.
| jacobgkau wrote:
| The top of the homepage says File Pilot was made from scratch
| (so I'd expect inherently less technical debt than something
| that's been around since the 90's). Comparing its screenshots
| to Directory Opus, it looks less cluttered, or at least
| slightly different. The interface looks like it adheres to the
| Windows 11 design style a little more, versus Directory Opus's
| screenshots looking like Windows 8-10.
|
| If I used Windows regularly, I'd probably appreciate having
| another option, just as I appreciate (and even take for
| granted) the ability to switch between various options on
| Linux.
| II2II wrote:
| On the other hand, 35 years of cruft also represents 35 years
| of accumulated knowledge about what people want from a file
| manager. So one should not dismiss Directory Opus based upon
| a few screenshots.
|
| Fresh blood is certainly a good thing though. I am just
| arguing that we should not dismiss something based upon its
| age or cosmetics.
|
| (Directory Opus is one of the few things that I miss while
| using Linux.)
| speckx wrote:
| In addition to Directory Opus, I also miss
| https://www.xyplorer.com/ on Windows since I'm on Linux.
| netsharc wrote:
| I prefer to use Win10 and probably move to Linux after that,
| so the interface doesn't match the rest of my OS. It's
| incredibly fast though.
|
| But speaking of technical debts, I couldn't open a UNC path (
| \\\nas\share\ ). Opening a network share mounted to a drive
| letter worked fine though.
| vjekoslav wrote:
| FP has been mostly tested and improved for mapped network
| drives, as the focus has been, and still is, on providing a
| very solid local experience.
|
| Direct network access (and better integration with NAS)
| will be added in the near future.
| delfinom wrote:
| I imagine it's because the UI may not be portable to Windows
|
| Linux basically has a pile of dogpoo and now with wayland still
| blocking the ability to have dockable windows, good luck. Lol
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| I'm pretty happy with the kde file manager on wayland
| personally
| endigma wrote:
| Rather poetically, this C software in 2025 segfaults on launch. I
| would file a GitHub issue if this was open source, but alas,
| nope.
| vjekoslav wrote:
| Are you running it inside a VM or Wine?
| endigma wrote:
| Nope, just the installer, win11
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| Is this cross platform or is it targeted at a particular
| filesystem? I skimmed the site but couldn't find any info. The
| FAQ is full of pricing minutiae but nothing about what platforms
| are supported?
| sumedh wrote:
| Windows only for now, other OS coming soon
| vjekoslav wrote:
| It will come to other OSes in time. The Windows platform layer
| is decoupled from everything else, such as rendering and UI, so
| I only need to write platform-specific code for other OSes.
| yarone wrote:
| Ha, reminds me of XTREE GOLD, from the late 80's / early 90's. A
| time where the default file explorer was unbearable.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| I still have the XTree keyboard shortcuts embedded in my muscle
| memory.
| nipperkinfeet wrote:
| Wow, after so many useless bloated Electron based applications
| over the years, this is like a breath of fresh air. This is so
| fast, lightweight, portable, and uses only 17 MB of memory with
| XL icons of over 10k photos. Very impressive. If only more
| developers would quit their laziness and make such software
| again.
| quyleanh wrote:
| Totally agree! Let's make a real joy such like this one. I feel
| a great sense of satisfaction and excitement watching the File
| Pilot development process.
| stavros wrote:
| What GUI framework did they use for this?
| qingcharles wrote:
| This is all I found:
|
| "It's written in C and has custom OpenGL renderer."
|
| https://filepilot.handmade.network/
| sachahjkl wrote:
| Made it himself
| pjc50 wrote:
| It looks like WPF but isn't. Sibling comment suggests sui
| generis, which explains the tiny size and lack of
| dependencies. This does make it blindingly fast but makes the
| keymappings different from what you'd normally expect.
| Haven't tested annoying cases e.g. two monitors with
| different DPI.
|
| edit: report of poor CJK support
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43100494 ; Windows file
| system encoding is annoying because it's UTF-16.
| regularfry wrote:
| This is always, always the tradeoff with custom UIs. The
| edge cases eat you alive.
| whartung wrote:
| I'm sorry, as I don't know.
|
| I mean, I don't even know what you use to write "windows"
| applications anymore.
|
| But are the stock frameworks that slow to justify rewriting
| the toolkit? I am under the impression that writing GUI
| toolkits was Hard.
|
| Are there plans to make this cross platform?
| vjekoslav wrote:
| It was written from scratch with a custom OpenGL renderer (a
| DirectX port is in progress for Windows) and a custom IMGUI
| layer on top.
| zerr wrote:
| You mean all those complex UI stuff code is written in
| immediate GUI? How maintainable/readable is the resulting
| code?
| vjekoslav wrote:
| Way more maintainable than anything from MS that I'd have
| to deal with.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Really impressive. Basically has everything from Windows 11
| Explorer without being a bloated POS.
|
| Only thing I'd love is to be able to go bigger on the preview
| thumbnails. It's limited itself to the Windows sizes.
| unquietwiki wrote:
| Looks promising, but I'm hard-pressed to think the $40/individual
| price point is reasonable. $10-20?
| ap-andersson wrote:
| Yeah and its $40 per year it seems. While its good that you can
| continue using your version after that it does seem just a
| little much. I'm not sure I even want to try it now because I
| don't want to like it and then decide I can't afford it. I'm
| not against yearly license cost at all, I think that it can be
| hard for software companies to make something good without it.
| But for a new software it seems just a tad high. And I guess it
| will seem even more depending on where you live.
| eps wrote:
| It's not "per year". It's your good old conventinal pricing,
| in disguise.
|
| You buy Xyz 2002, you get to keep Xyz 2002 and get some
| updates. When new and shiny Xyz 2004 comes out, you look at
| the spec and decide if new features worth the upgrade cost.
|
| Same here, except improvements are gradual and not packaged
| into yearly releases.
| prox wrote:
| Yeah, this feels more like a 25-35 tops type of software, I
| wouldn't think twice.
|
| At least the beta is still free now. $50 which is the default
| price, is too much.
| martin_henk wrote:
| Especially working in cloud environments is so cumbersome... Sync
| to the cloud is great, but we lost these kind of tools that just
| make life so much easier when handling many files and such
| user_7832 wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is really the right place to ask, but it's
| close enough so I'll ask anyway - why are there no apparent file
| explorers that allow simultaneous "multi depth" viewing? For
| example, if Folder A contains only Subfolders B and C which are
| both empty, why are there no explorers that show eg 2 boxes
| called 'B' and 'C' inside A's icon/view? If a directly has dozens
| of empty folders, and 2 subfolders have 1 file each, and another
| subfolder has 20 files and takes 99% of space, why is there no
| intuitive way to quickly find the large folder?
|
| The closest is probably how windows shows previews on desktop but
| that is only one level deep, if there are empty subfolders it
| doesn't help.
|
| Id imagine _someone_ at Plan9 or WebOS or BeOS or some archaic
| software /OS developer had surely thought of this and made
| something. Yet all "top" windows file explorers are completely
| "flat" and don't show any depth.
| sorenjan wrote:
| It's not a file explorer so not exactly what you're looking
| for, but WizTree is good for finding out which folder contains
| the large files. It's like WinDirStat but much faster.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Thanks, I'm familiar with WizTree but to the best of
| knowledge it's meant more to find what's taking space, rather
| than navigating between folders. I'm not sure how practical
| it would be as a replacement of file explorer, for example I
| think it defaults to mapping out the whole drive (rather than
| a specific folder). But thanks anyway for the suggestion!
| defrost wrote:
| WizTree can be used to navigate about a subtree,
|
| _if_ you start from File Explorer Navigation Pane and used
| the default WizTree install then every folder (in File
| Explorer) should have a right click context menu item that
| launches Wiztree for just the folder subtree.
|
| _if_ you start from command.com or Powershell then you can
| pass a subdirectory path as an argument (with a switchy? I
| don 't recall ATM) or make a shortcut comman to launch
| WizTree for a subfolder.
| 6510 wrote:
| Sounds interesting, I use to use a tool that showed a drives or
| folders content by file size. Larger files being larger boxes.
|
| It definitely seems useful to have a view where folders are
| simply boxes with ---names--- in their top border. A folder
| could also be a simple outline with its name in front of the
| file names.
|
| Something like this
|
| https://img.go-here.nl/folder-view.png
| user_7832 wrote:
| Thank you, that's a nice photo and shows something very close
| to what I'm thinking about! (Albeit hopefully a little less
| barebones haha)
|
| Could you share the name of the software it is/was, or
| perhaps a link?
| 6510 wrote:
| There is no software, I just make a drawing to see what I'm
| thinking. Ideas fail surprisingly often in the process. For
| example, here the boxes somewhat conflict with lining up
| the text and the line spacing. Some background color
| (rather than outlines) could better visualize the nesting
| and use less space. I think a folder that contains only one
| file should look almost exactly like the file was in the
| parent folder.
|
| If the folder name is long it should probably fail back on
| the normal tree view rather than putting it in front of the
| files in the box. But then you get a mix of solutions which
| is undesirable.
|
| I'm afraid people are to used to the traditional tree view.
| It is a surprisingly good solution now that I've bothered
| to think about it.
|
| Folders should probably just have a value in the size
| column and the screens are large enough to have a column
| for the number of files. (the pilot does F:21 S:123) Empty
| folder and file font colors can be slightly translucent.
| M95D wrote:
| SpaceMonger
|
| I used that since Win95.
| idyllrain wrote:
| Directory Opus lets you see this by enabling relative size bars
| in file lister views: https://resource.dopus.com/t/calculate-
| folder-sizes-automati...
| Leftium wrote:
| Directory Opus has a "flat tree" view (as well as a plain
| "flat" view): https://imgur.com/3uqW8it
|
| Directory Opus can also calculate & display the sizes of
| folders including all child content. (The calculation is nearly
| instant if Everything integration is enabled.)
| esafak wrote:
| Back when I used to torment myself with Windows, I used to use
| Zabkat Xplorer2. https://www.zabkat.com/
|
| It looks old skool now it did its job well.
| basch wrote:
| Saladin was a great dual pane navigator
| https://saladin.mimec.org
| sorenjan wrote:
| Another file explorer option is Files [0], that looks a lot more
| like the built in Explorer in Windows but with some additional
| features.
|
| [0] https://files.community/
| xyx0826 wrote:
| Files looks great but it has performance issues and occasional
| crashes when I tried it out a few months ago. When going into
| subfolders, there is a very noticeable subsecond lag which I
| don't get from native Explorer. For all complaints of lack of
| features that Windows File Explorer gets, it's still a very
| respectable native GUI app for being Windows' most used
| program!
| 6510 wrote:
| It's usable most of the time until it isn't. Far to often I
| wonder what they were thinking making things. Say, where is
| the recycle bin? If I could switch to the windows 95 explorer
| I would do it immediately.
| kawaiikouhai wrote:
| yeah honestly files was such a disappointment for me. Modern
| i5 from 2 years ago desktop system on windows 11 and it would
| crash every 2-3 days just browsing with at most <15 tabs
| open.
|
| Was it coded in electron? What's filepilot made in?
| free_bip wrote:
| Now imagine how nice Windows would be if every OS GUI was re-
| designed like this
| eviks wrote:
| Does it integrate with Everything allowing for instant search
| results for any file anywhere? Plans to have extensions? A
| detailed comparison with Directory Opus would be welcome
| tobwen wrote:
| That's exactly what I've been asking myself and I wish I could.
| I index our huge, nested network drives every night with
| Everything and can search & find within seconds.
| vjekoslav wrote:
| It does not integrate with Everything. It's already blazingly
| fast with the regular WinAPI for indexing. However, MFT
| indexing (which Everything uses) will be added as built-in
| support in the near future. It will be an opt-in option for
| users.
|
| There are a couple of reasons why I didn't want to make MFT the
| default.
|
| a) It requires admin access.
|
| b) It's NTFS specific, which means you need to write different
| logic for other file systems anyway.
|
| c) It's not officially documented or supported by Microsoft. It
| was reverse-engineered.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| If there's a portable version of this I can run on my work
| computer, I will! (stand-alone version, it's so fast!)
|
| The Windows built-in File Explorer is godawfully slow. Like,
| slower than I remember it being in the late 90's. Motivation-
| sappingly slow. But I think it's because my work computer has
| it's inescapable synchronisation to OneDrive, and so every folder
| and every file it has to scan for a thumbnail or whatever, waits
| for it's data from OneDrive like a happy little idiot.
|
| Funnily enough, navigating a remote directory on my NAS from my
| home Linux desktop is blazingly fast as if the files are local.
|
| Windows or the Corporate Environment, or the combination of the
| two, is creating so much overhead that it feels like going back
| in time 25+ years.
| egeozcan wrote:
| Also company computer: Built-in file explorer sometimes takes 3
| seconds to display a thumbnail for a 10KB png I saved to a
| folder from my editor. I just don't get it. We also have
| OneDrive. Don't shoot the messenger alright but it really makes
| me want to punch the monitor.
| metalman wrote:
| People are gushing about a file explorer, what? Looks like
| there is a plan to force user's to pay for a subscription to
| there own local files. My $90 wallmart phone and hinky fdroid
| software is faster than than what is bieng described on
| current windopes editions. what happened? since my last
| windoze experience? linux on the laptop is ok, ancient
| laptop, cheap phone, that play nice with each other, random
| free sofware, does what it says on the label and more.
| Obviously my set up is not goung to work in a professional
| business environment, but then for professional users,
| hunting around for fixes to inadequate OS features, should be
| a thing of the past. tedious and somewhat embarassing that
| things are so horrible, now, still, again
| kristianp wrote:
| Maybe it's Onedrive. My older laptop has Onedrive and dropbox
| (not on the same folders) and Explorer runs like molasses in
| the dropbox folder.
| Sweepi wrote:
| There seems to be one, at least the "installer" asks you if you
| want to install or have a portable installation.
| guilamu wrote:
| It is portable by default, no need to install anything, just
| run the main and only exe.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| OneDrive is an abomination. I never asked for it on my
| computer. It is infuriating that MS apps default to saving to
| it.
| 6510 wrote:
| I join the mailing-list but I only wanted was an email when the
| beta is over.
|
| It looks stunning. Well done!
| satvikpendem wrote:
| If anyone doesn't know, Windows PowerToys has some of these
| features built in, like bulk renaming. I particularly like their
| FancyZones feature, although that's unrelated to the file
| explorer.
| keyle wrote:
| I've followed this developer for a while, I'm glad to see it
| finally out in the open.
|
| Then I looked at the pricing... wow, you really gotta dislike
| explorer.exe.
| egeozcan wrote:
| It's a one-time purchase of 40 bucks. 200 for priority support.
| It's not peanuts for many people but far from overpriced IMHO.
| rob74 wrote:
| 40 EUR includes one year of updates, if you want lifetime
| updates, you have to pay 200 EUR.
|
| Good old Total Commander, the all-time classic alternative
| file manager for Windows, costs 42 EUR + VAT with lifetime
| updates (https://www.ghisler.com/order.htm). But yeah, I have
| to admit that the application looks as dated as the
| website...
| M95D wrote:
| I like dated. I used it since it was called Windows
| Commander, on Win311.
|
| Unfortunately Total Commander is starting to become bloated
| too. The file copy/move window, the one with the progress
| bars, looks horrible in v11.
| hackermanai wrote:
| I don't even dislike default file explorers that much and will
| buy this (whenever they release Mac one).
|
| I like to buy good software.
| dazzawazza wrote:
| I'm a long time Directory Opus (dopus) user which costs around
| 50 US$. Dopus is more extendible but probably not as fast.
| Seems like a reasonable price to me. When you deal with a LOT
| of files like I do as a game dev it pays for itself pretty
| quickly.
| schiho wrote:
| I was looking for this one feature listing: fast file deletes,
| guess that's just how windows rolls
| pjc50 wrote:
| You can't really beat the NTFS API being horribly slow.
|
| Well, maybe you could, just as "Everything" file search
| achieves speed by bypassing the API entirely, but I think an
| application that wrote raw NTFS block writes would be rather
| high risk for most people to use.
| semantecture wrote:
| Nice work, really snappy, love the "speed at the your fingertips"
| approach. I absolutly am willing to shell out some EUR for such
| life-altering tools.
|
| I have been entrenched in the https://www.ghisler.com/ camp for
| 20+ years for three main reasons:
|
| 1. function keys for copy/move etc. like in mc, norton etc.
|
| 2. navigate (even larger) archive files in every format under the
| sun as if it were an extension of the file system. Blazingly fast
| and seamless.
|
| 3. the rich ecosystem of viewers , add-ons that has been added by
| the community at https://totalcmd.net/ over decades and is
| supported by the open source alternative implementation
| https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io/
|
| Any roadmap that has some of this on the list? [edited spelling]
|
| Thanks for the cool work!
| vjekoslav wrote:
| Thanks for trying it out!
|
| I was a long-time TC user too.
|
| 1) Those are not assigned by default, but all hotkeys in FP are
| reassignable, so you can create a setup very similar to TC.
|
| 2) This is a planned feature.
|
| 3) Not currently on the roadmap, but it's a possibility.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| Between all two-panel clones of the Norton Commander [1] FAR
| [2] is by far the best of the bunch /rimshot.
|
| Very keyboard-oriented, extremely capable, super fast, open
| source with a vast plug-in library. A console app on top of
| that _and_ it looks like the original. What 's not to like.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander
|
| [2] https://www.farmanager.com/
| basch wrote:
| on windows I was partial to Saladin
| https://saladin.mimec.org/
| justsid wrote:
| This is eye opening to me. I have been swearing by
| Directory Opus for years, but I was also under the
| misguided impression that most Norton Commander clones were
| long gone. Love seeing so many alternatives, I'll have to
| go check the, out.
| throwaway_20357 wrote:
| Also still use Total Commander, a software now in development
| for > 30 years. Even paid way more for continuing my CrossOver
| subscription than in TC license fees over the years.
| progbits wrote:
| Wow that TortoiseSVN in context menu is a blast from the past!
|
| Looks like it's still under active development. Is SVN still
| being used in some industries? I know it used to be big in
| gamedev but I would have expected everyone to have moved on by
| now.
| Sweepi wrote:
| TortoiseSVN (+Winmerge as diff tool) still is my go-to for non-
| programmers. If the person groks the windows explorer,
| TortoiseSVN just makes everything better and nothing worse.
| Log/History, Blame, Add, Update, ..: everything of importance
| is in the context menu. Also the trunk/stable model is more
| intuitive then "everybody has a branch and then there are
| merges, and merges of merges....".
|
| Did show it to lawyer and he got it in an hour.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I still use TortoiseSVN. I have run my own 1-man software
| company for the last 20 years and don't see any advantage in
| switching to Git or similar.
| mrcomplicated wrote:
| SVN is used in the movies industry as far as I can remember.
| Especially 3d artists use this for synchronizing their models.
| dazzawazza wrote:
| It's still used with Unreal Engine when people don't want to
| pay the Perforce tax. Although most of the "hip young kids"
| waste their time with git+lfs the people actually getting work
| done on LARGE projects still rely on Subversion... and probably
| tortoise.
| usmanmehmood55 wrote:
| This is SO much better than Windows explorer! And I'm more than
| happy to pay for it.
|
| The only issue I have noticed is that the context menu takes a
| while to open, and it is made worse because of the opening and
| closing animation. It keeps bugging me because I feel like the
| context menu of Windows explorer is a bit snappier than this.
|
| I might be wrong but that's what it _feels_ like.
| vjekoslav wrote:
| That's FP waiting for Windows. When it takes longer, it's
| usually a third-party plugin initializing.
|
| I have some things to try to mitigate these issues, but
| unfortunately, this whole architecture is broken. MS should not
| have allowed extensions to take over.
| mrlinx wrote:
| Would you recommend any app to "troubleshoot" these delays?
| Maybe a tool that helps seeing which extensions take long to
| load?
| tredre3 wrote:
| ShellExView can be used to track down slow extensions (but
| it doesn't offer runtime performance numbers):
|
| https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html
| troffed wrote:
| Really, really, really impressive the speed of that piece of
| software.
|
| I tested it with a bit of skepticism, but it left me open-mouthed
| at the speed with which it does everything.
|
| I will test it for a few days and if it is confirmed, I will not
| hesitate to purchase a license.
| vjekoslav wrote:
| Thank you!
| warlock_0707 wrote:
| It's so fast, it makes my nervous system twitch.
| vim-guru wrote:
| You might as well sell this to Microsoft--they'd pay well, and
| more people would get to benefit from your great work!
|
| It really makes you wonder what kind of bloat is slowing down
| Explorer and whether it's lurking elsewhere too.
| vjekoslav wrote:
| It's an open possibility :)
| enoch2090 wrote:
| Looks pretty good but all CJK characters are displayed as
| questionmarks (???) and switching to a CJK native font does no
| help. So my user folder is now crowded with ???????? which makes
| it hard to navigate :(
| vjekoslav wrote:
| Unfortunately, I only support Latin and Cyrillic for now. But
| full unicode support will come in the future.
| prell wrote:
| This is great indeed but IMO only tech nerds can really
| appreciate it. My son is 10 and he never really needs to deal
| with _real_ files. Nowadays normal kids just go any given app to
| access their photos or docs or music or movies or really
| anything. The notion of copying a file has been replaced by
| sharing, renaming doesn 't really exists when it comes to photos
| for example and folder structure (when available) is some form of
| tags and labels depending on the particular app. It's sad. What
| do you think, are files a thing of the past?
| DCH3416 wrote:
| Files will always exist conceptually as a way of expressing
| data. The notion of sharing exists because of sandboxing and
| the need to exchange data between apps. This has been extended
| beyond just apps to sharing between multiple users or
| endpoints. Actual file naming for some objects has been
| superseded by meta data and tagging because it provides a
| better way of describing the thing.
|
| The goal has always been to pull file management away from
| users. Because they don't need to know or care how the internal
| data structures work. So yes, in a sense file management is
| trending towards more of a need to know basis.
| AlexDragusin wrote:
| The best part of this is the typing for a system command once you
| right click a file, helps a lot to quickly get to items I need to
| run on the file. Microsoft should done something like this in W11
| instead of the shitty extra menu nonsense and many other
| annoyances on W11.
|
| Microsoft, watch out for "garage" people like vjekoslav here.
| physiox wrote:
| Wow, it's so lightweight. Thank you! Are you thinking about
| expanding the language support besides english?
| vjekoslav wrote:
| Yes, proper localization will be probably be included in first
| official V1 version.
| throw39299 wrote:
| I like Windows Explorer because of the Directory Tree. I like
| being able to expand a folder on the left hand side, and any
| folder inside it will also be shown nested underneath it.
|
| I've been looking for a similar file explorer for MacOS, but all
| of them follow the the MacOS Finder method.
| innerHTML wrote:
| I had the same issue with linux, I am using PcManFM but frankly
| it's not as good as explorer. I very much prefer the old
| explorer that drew the tree and branches. None of file managers
| I tried had this basic functionality.
| bythreads wrote:
| so....does it fix the abysmal speed of copying files in windows?
| nanna wrote:
| This is HN so don't bash me for saying this, but Emacs Dired
| rinses this.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMWwM8QJAtU&t=1s
| scarfaceneo wrote:
| Two completely unrelated products.
| nanna wrote:
| Dired, the file manager that comes in Emacs, is 'completely
| unrelated' to a file manager named File Pilot?
| mexicocitinluez wrote:
| Yes.
|
| A file manager tied to Emacs is completely unrelated to a
| Windows-based file system app. You're trying to make your
| video relevant and it's not.
| nanna wrote:
| You do realise that Emacs runs in Windows?
| leimbacher wrote:
| Could somebody please explain how people are ready to invest
| their own time into development of such projects? I mean it's so
| risky and at the same time one still has to pay the bills.
| anthony88 wrote:
| I can't answer for the File Pilot author but I've spent many
| years on writing a file manager. * It's fun to write and to
| use. It's like craftmanship. * Hopefully some companies/people
| will realize how many hours they waste using the default OS
| file manager * It's less risky than developing a game full time
| (I think) * Sure, I lost a lot of money to not having a normal
| job but my bills are low and my priority is more happiness
| tredre3 wrote:
| > It's like craftmanship.
|
| I've come to realize (mainly by reading comments on this very
| forum) that, for an increasing amount of people, programming
| is just a job and they don't see it as an art form or a
| hobby. They genuinely cannot fathom that someone would spend
| time on ANY project without being paid.
|
| It's very sad but ultimately society couldn't function of we
| only hired passion-driven programmers, so eh.
| JavierFlores09 wrote:
| I'd like to believe any developer has more than a few pet
| projects around which they dedicate their time into whenever
| one has free time. Some get forgotten, others are overly
| specific to be marketed at all but maybe that one in a hundred
| has the opportunity to become a good investment, so it is just
| matter of buckling up and trying to ship it to the world. This
| doesn't mean it's going to make you financially successful, but
| actually delivering products does give you the experience of
| knowing what makes a successful one if anything at all. If you
| are lucky, you may break even in terms of time/resources spent
| after all the ordeal and you also get experience, though I
| wouldn't say that's the experience of most for the first few
| times, there's always a point in trying.
| mherrmann wrote:
| I once devoted 2 years of my life to developing a file manager
| called fman [1]. In total, it generated probably 35,000$ in
| profits, so my income from the project is somewhere around 10
| $/h. As software developers, our opportunity costs are high. I
| use my file manager to this day and love it. But I regret
| spending so much time on it.
|
| Congratulations on your launch. I wish you more success than I've
| had. Failing that, I wish you that you will see earlier than I
| did when it is time to move on.
|
| I once recorded a video about my experiences developing a file
| manager [2]. Maybe you'll also find some interesting bits and
| pieces on fman's blog [3]. Incidentally, an article there is what
| sparked my current venture, which is much more profitable:
| consulting services around automatic updates.
|
| If you'd like to have a chat, feel free to reach out. My contact
| info is on my website. :-)
|
| Good luck!
|
| [1]: https://fman.io
|
| [2]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I1K3IkOlaVw
|
| [3]: https://fman.io/blog/
| zerr wrote:
| Good to know, thanks for the insight. I was playing with the
| idea of creating a similar app, with more features and faster
| (in C++). I guess there is no much demand for modern NC clones,
| orthodox file managers. Btw, are the sales still going on?
| mherrmann wrote:
| I put it down to desktop utility apps being a very tough
| market because 1. they are time-consuming to develop and 2.
| people hate paying for desktop software. You already have
| several comments in this very thread from people complaining
| about the price:
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43102477
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43099230
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43097749
|
| Ah and yes, I'm still getting a handful of fman sales per
| month. But nowhere near enough to justify any time
| investment.
| vjekoslav wrote:
| Hey, thanks! Yes, I know about Fman. I've tried pretty much all
| file explorers on Windows, a fair number on Linux, and fewer on
| macOS. I watched that video a couple of years ago, it had some
| nice insights. Thanks for sharing that.
|
| I've been talking about File Pilot since the early days of the
| project, so I managed to build a following on Twitter and
| Discord, along with a decent number of email subscribers. I'm
| hoping that'll be enough to spread the word.
|
| I'm sorry Fman didn't work out for you as a business. But truth
| be told, you need to deliver something exceptional to compete
| with established players. While I don't see other file explorer
| alternatives as direct competition, I do think File Pilot will
| bring a breath of fresh air. We'll see how it goes!
| mherrmann wrote:
| Hm, are you hinting that fman was not exceptional at its
| time? If yes, then I disagree.
| truetraveller wrote:
| That's not exceptional IMHO. It's a good effort, but not
| exceptional. Exceptional apps scream "wow" and are feature
| rich, with great UI/UX. Example of exceptional apps are
| Obsidian, TablePlus, Transmit (by panic), Sublime Text,
| VSCode. File Pilot has that "wow" factor and the features.
| stuaxo wrote:
| This looks decent, I'd use it outside of Windows if it was
| available there.
| RNAlfons wrote:
| This is a really sexy explorer.
|
| I love it. Love how snappy it is, love the thought that went into
| it, love the dark design. Awesome. I'll keep using the beta at
| work as long as I can but unfortunately I won't get funds to buy
| it for work. It's too bad that you can get updates only for one
| year with the normal license. Would have considered buying it for
| the price for private use but 200 is just too much for a file
| explorer.
| smusamashah wrote:
| Been waiting for this to be released. Thanks.
|
| Feedback: Show complete file name in thumbnail view. Currently
| its replaced with ...
| DCH3416 wrote:
| It seems to require the actual windows explorer to be running.
| Which kinda negates its potential as a shell replacement.
| tredre3 wrote:
| Maybe I misunderstand what you mean, but Windows Explorer is
| also the shell on Windows (handles things like the task bar and
| the desktop icons), so you will always see it running in the
| background.
| DCH3416 wrote:
| Windows doesn't need explorer to actually function, it's just
| another component that adds optional extras to the desktop
| environment such as the task bar and desktop icons. Kill
| explorer.exe, your desktop and taskbar disappear, but
| programs still operate and can be manipulated and minimized,
| just in a more Win3.1 style flavor. A file browser window can
| be called directly without the explorer shell running,
| "explorer.exe /e".
|
| Problem occurs when you have programs that dip into
| explorer's shell components expecting them to be running when
| that might not be the case. For that case you couldn't fully
| turn explorer off if you were, for example, trimming down a
| modern version of windows.
| shlomo_z wrote:
| This looks cool. But it seems to keep files separate from
| folders. Is it possible to sort by data modified with files and
| folders together?
| vjekoslav wrote:
| Yes, the separation between folders and files is a toggleable
| option. You can sort by date modified. Also, you should try it
| yourself, it's in free beta. :)
| bityard wrote:
| From the screenshots (which are videos), it sure looks a lot like
| what you would get if you ported KDE's Dolphin to Windows.
| sho_hn wrote:
| It's likely not tested very well, but in principle you can
| build and run Dolphin on Windows.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Dolphin is available for Windows[0].
|
| [0]: https://cdn.kde.org/ci-
| builds/system/dolphin/master/windows/
| otterpro wrote:
| I've been using a free file explorer called Q-Dir
| (http://www.q-dir.com) by a guy who writes a lot of these types
| of utilities for windows. It has a quirky UI and it has 4
| quadrants by default, but once I got used to using it, it was
| almost life-changing. It is compatible with every windows, even
| windows 98. It's updated fairly frequently, even till now.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| How does this compare to the existing Explorer alternatives? IE:
| OneCommander, Directory Opus and to a lesser extent
| TotalCommander and Multi Commander.
|
| What would be the major features it offers that others do not?
| vjekoslav wrote:
| Speed, modern UI, rearangable panels & tabs, globaly accesable
| and remmapable all actions via cmd palette, GoTo window, batch
| rename...
|
| And many more things to come. Since this was built from
| scratch, a lot of time and enginering effort was put into
| building a solid base. I'm in a phase where adding new stuff is
| fairly frictionless, so it's gonna get a lot better in the
| coming months.
|
| That being said, it's only 3 years old, very young compared to
| other long time players. So, it's not comparable feature for
| feature, yet.
| johny115 wrote:
| okay ...
|
| - it's fast (great!)
|
| - it can't play videos in preview pane (very bad) or display some
| types of images (webp)
|
| - design is nice but there is too much padding in thumbnail view
| and no way to control it (not good)
|
| - it's super similar to Files -
| https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9nghp3dx8hdx?hl=en-US&gl=U... ,
| except that one can play videos and is more than 20x cheaper
|
| - price, the Files I mentioned cost $8.99, I'd never thought i'd
| dish out any money on file explorer but here we go, yours is
| faster and if the full release will perfect the areas i
| mentioned, id pay up to $19 for it ... now asking $200 for file
| explorer is just mad ... i am in B2B so I know pains of dev
| software, but if I see such price, Id just be giving imaginary
| thumbs up to people who pirate this instead, unless this has some
| crazy super powers and is meant for some very specific
| professionals for business (I don't see the use case), there is
| no justification for such price, even from point of view of
| maximum greed I highly doubt with such prices youd be squeezing
| the most revenue out of market you could, the yearly plan is more
| of a slap in a face, software without updates is useless,
| especially since its early in development and will see lot of
| basic polish in first few years if worked on .. i wouldn't buy
| it, but something along $49 for it wouldn't at least scream
| offensive ... id just look at that with disappointment and move
| on, even that would be basically asking for the price of AAA
| videogame, for minor improvement of utility in Windows
|
| - that said, good luck ... I saw lot of people here post what
| they use; i dont want to offend anyone, but seems devs don't have
| cells for visual taste, those don't compare with yours, but you
| seem to have the speed of those (sort of, once i opened folder
| with 4k images, it completely froze for a full minute, windows
| explorer wouldn't do that, so ... speed is good, but can't
| sacrifice reliability for it.)
| davidjade wrote:
| I really like this and I think it is off to a good start. But I
| also think there will be interesting/hard corner cases (such as
| offline/reparse point files - I logged a request for that in
| Discord).
|
| I don't think it needs to cover every special case but that's
| because I don't really want to use it to be a Explorer
| replacement. I see it rather as a supplemental tool.
| rkagerer wrote:
| Where does it store configuration info? (e.g. like the flag that
| you chose the "Standalone" option)
|
| Is there a forum, or something non-Discord where you can see
| community-answered tech questions previously asked (without
| having to log into anything)?
| pkkm wrote:
| 1.8 MB standalone executable! That's cool to see in an era of
| huge apps.
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