Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer
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What's wrong with Win10 File Explorer?
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@scottalanmiller said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
Chocolatey
Chocolatey is a package management system for the Windows NuGet packaging format. Analogous to YUM, APT, or DNF on Linux. Chocolatey is as close to official as it gets with Windows not quite having an official package manager. It's very powerful and useful, free, too.
You can install it with this command in Administrative PowerShell...
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))FTFY -
It's only every worked for me in an Admin Powershell or admin CMD -
@WrCombs said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@scottalanmiller said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
Chocolatey
Chocolatey is a package management system for the Windows NuGet packaging format. Analogous to YUM, APT, or DNF on Linux. Chocolatey is as close to official as it gets with Windows not quite having an official package manager. It's very powerful and useful, free, too.
You can install it with this command in Administrative PowerShell...
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))FTFY -
It's only every worked for me in an Admin Powershell or admin CMDThat's the case for ALL installs.
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@scottalanmiller said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@WrCombs said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@scottalanmiller said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
Chocolatey
Chocolatey is a package management system for the Windows NuGet packaging format. Analogous to YUM, APT, or DNF on Linux. Chocolatey is as close to official as it gets with Windows not quite having an official package manager. It's very powerful and useful, free, too.
You can install it with this command in Administrative PowerShell...
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))FTFY -
It's only every worked for me in an Admin Powershell or admin CMDThat's the case for ALL installs.
I was starting to understand that.
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@hobbit666 said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
What's wrong with Win10 File Explorer?
Yeah, what's up with that?
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@BRRABill said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@hobbit666 said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
What's wrong with Win10 File Explorer?
Yeah, what's up with that?
Some folks don't like having 50 windows open when doing drag & drop / copy and paste?
I've yet to find one that I consistently come back to -- no matter what OS I'm using... Althought Multicommander is looking kinda nice.
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@scottalanmiller said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@WrCombs said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@scottalanmiller said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
Chocolatey
Chocolatey is a package management system for the Windows NuGet packaging format. Analogous to YUM, APT, or DNF on Linux. Chocolatey is as close to official as it gets with Windows not quite having an official package manager. It's very powerful and useful, free, too.
You can install it with this command in Administrative PowerShell...
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))FTFY -
It's only every worked for me in an Admin Powershell or admin CMDThat's the case for ALL installs.
You could use the chocolately gui
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@DustinB3403 said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@scottalanmiller said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@WrCombs said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@scottalanmiller said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
Chocolatey
Chocolatey is a package management system for the Windows NuGet packaging format. Analogous to YUM, APT, or DNF on Linux. Chocolatey is as close to official as it gets with Windows not quite having an official package manager. It's very powerful and useful, free, too.
You can install it with this command in Administrative PowerShell...
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))FTFY -
It's only every worked for me in an Admin Powershell or admin CMDThat's the case for ALL installs.
You could use the chocolately gui
Has to run as admin, too.
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@scottalanmiller said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@DustinB3403 said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@scottalanmiller said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@WrCombs said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@scottalanmiller said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
Chocolatey
Chocolatey is a package management system for the Windows NuGet packaging format. Analogous to YUM, APT, or DNF on Linux. Chocolatey is as close to official as it gets with Windows not quite having an official package manager. It's very powerful and useful, free, too.
You can install it with this command in Administrative PowerShell...
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))FTFY -
It's only every worked for me in an Admin Powershell or admin CMDThat's the case for ALL installs.
You could use the chocolately gui
Has to run as admin, too.
Chocolatey absolutely does not need to run as admin.
It has to be installed as admin. But you can run it without admin rights and install things in the user scope.
Granted not many windows applications are designed to install to the user scope, so that would be a problem. But that is not chocolatey's fault.
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@dafyre said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@BRRABill said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@hobbit666 said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
What's wrong with Win10 File Explorer?
Yeah, what's up with that?
Some folks don't like having 50 windows open when doing drag & drop / copy and paste?
I've yet to find one that I consistently come back to -- no matter what OS I'm using... Althought Multicommander is looking kinda nice.
So it's more of an issue with Explorer's file navigation in general rather than an issue specific to Windows 10? Because that's sort of the inference from what OP wrote.
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@tonyshowoff said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@dafyre said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@BRRABill said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@hobbit666 said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
What's wrong with Win10 File Explorer?
Yeah, what's up with that?
Some folks don't like having 50 windows open when doing drag & drop / copy and paste?
I've yet to find one that I consistently come back to -- no matter what OS I'm using... Althought Multicommander is looking kinda nice.
So it's more of an issue with Explorer's file navigation in general rather than an issue specific to Windows 10? Because that's sort of the inference from what OP wrote.
Pretty much, yeah. Some folks like using Explorer, other folks like tools like Midnight Commander, et al.
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@dafyre said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@tonyshowoff said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@dafyre said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@BRRABill said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@hobbit666 said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
What's wrong with Win10 File Explorer?
Yeah, what's up with that?
Some folks don't like having 50 windows open when doing drag & drop / copy and paste?
I've yet to find one that I consistently come back to -- no matter what OS I'm using... Althought Multicommander is looking kinda nice.
So it's more of an issue with Explorer's file navigation in general rather than an issue specific to Windows 10? Because that's sort of the inference from what OP wrote.
Pretty much, yeah. Some folks like using Explorer, other folks like tools like Midnight Commander, et al.
How easy is it to revert to stock Windows explorer after test driving another one?
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@wrx7m said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@dafyre said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@tonyshowoff said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@dafyre said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@BRRABill said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@hobbit666 said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
What's wrong with Win10 File Explorer?
Yeah, what's up with that?
Some folks don't like having 50 windows open when doing drag & drop / copy and paste?
I've yet to find one that I consistently come back to -- no matter what OS I'm using... Althought Multicommander is looking kinda nice.
So it's more of an issue with Explorer's file navigation in general rather than an issue specific to Windows 10? Because that's sort of the inference from what OP wrote.
Pretty much, yeah. Some folks like using Explorer, other folks like tools like Midnight Commander, et al.
How easy is it to revert to stock Windows explorer after test driving another one?
These are separate apps. You have to run them yourself. They don't take over that I'm aware of.
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@dafyre said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@wrx7m said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@dafyre said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@tonyshowoff said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@dafyre said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@BRRABill said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@hobbit666 said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
What's wrong with Win10 File Explorer?
Yeah, what's up with that?
Some folks don't like having 50 windows open when doing drag & drop / copy and paste?
I've yet to find one that I consistently come back to -- no matter what OS I'm using... Althought Multicommander is looking kinda nice.
So it's more of an issue with Explorer's file navigation in general rather than an issue specific to Windows 10? Because that's sort of the inference from what OP wrote.
Pretty much, yeah. Some folks like using Explorer, other folks like tools like Midnight Commander, et al.
How easy is it to revert to stock Windows explorer after test driving another one?
These are separate apps. You have to run them yourself. They don't take over that I'm aware of.
It certainly could though and may have the option to, because there are API hooks and also, at least I recall in Windows 2000 (may still be true) registry entries to change both the shell (explorer) and the file navigation explorer.
I wrote both shell and file explorer replacements for Windows 98 and also NT 4.0 Workstation and 2000, then I lost interest. I basically was just trying (and succeeded) to force Windows to act like Blackbox when I had to do Windows development.
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@tonyshowoff said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@dafyre said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@wrx7m said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@dafyre said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@tonyshowoff said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@dafyre said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@BRRABill said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
@hobbit666 said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
What's wrong with Win10 File Explorer?
Yeah, what's up with that?
Some folks don't like having 50 windows open when doing drag & drop / copy and paste?
I've yet to find one that I consistently come back to -- no matter what OS I'm using... Althought Multicommander is looking kinda nice.
So it's more of an issue with Explorer's file navigation in general rather than an issue specific to Windows 10? Because that's sort of the inference from what OP wrote.
Pretty much, yeah. Some folks like using Explorer, other folks like tools like Midnight Commander, et al.
How easy is it to revert to stock Windows explorer after test driving another one?
These are separate apps. You have to run them yourself. They don't take over that I'm aware of.
It certainly could though and may have the option to, because there are API hooks and also, at least I recall in Windows 2000 (may still be true) registry entries to change both the shell (explorer) and the file navigation explorer.
I wrote both shell and file explorer replacements for Windows 98 and also NT 4.0 Workstation and 2000, then I lost interest. I basically was just trying (and succeeded) to force Windows to act like Blackbox when I had to do Windows development.
Yeah. These don't do that by default though... Be nice if I could make WIN+E open up any app I wanted, lol.
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@dafyre I can't remember if Windows + E opens file explorer as set in registry or simply runs the shell again, I seem to remember that being a weird issue I had to deal with but it may have been with 98 rather than NT. Because in the infinite genius of Microsoft, explorer.exe runs both the shell and file explorer.
Essentially when it executes, if it sees other mutexes (instances of itself running) it will hook the DLL(s) for the file explorer, otherwise it assumes the shell has not started or has crash and just reloads the shell (probably still hooks shell32.dll). It's why you can kill explorer.exe totally and then run it again from task manager and it'll restart the shell and not just open up (My) Computer. Otherwise if you execute explorer.exe with Explorer already running you'll get your computer or whatever it's set to navigate to.
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thanks for all the feedback folks. i spent time looking at alternatives and wondered if they'd work with Onedrive? I've only got bcak to this again and can say that Q-Dir does work with Onedrive.
When I say work, it shows me which files are in cloud, which are local and which are syncing. Not sure if all will do that, but Q-Dir does.
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@scottalanmiller said in Alternatives to Windows 10 File Explorer:
What are you looking for in the alternative?
I'm curious as well. I've not run into any requirements that the default file explorer in Win10 can't handle.
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i wanted an easier way to copy files to multiple folders and have the folder hierarchy duplicated within parent folders, in other words I wanted to see more stuff in more places all at once.
Q-Dir works pretty well and it seems to work accurately with Onedrive which is a bonus, not all of them do, actually Q-Dir is the only one I've found that can display Onedrive statuses or statii for files and folders.
I like to know if any other alternatives have the Onedrive status functionality.
