What is the best alternative to Process Hacker?

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score 23 · Answer 1

Cygwin

Top Pro

Additional packages available via Cygwin Ports project

Top Con

Many incompatibilities

A lot of tools don't actually work with Cygwin, and documentation is often sparse, so for many use cases, it's worth the small bit of extra effort to just run a full virtual machine. See More

Top Pro

Better default terminal

Cygwin's default terminal "Mintty" is far better than CMD. See More

Top Pro

You can run graphical applications

It has X Server. See More

23 0

score 43 · Answer 2

Listary

Top Pro

It's also a launcher

Once you find the file you need, you can launch it or use custom actions. See More

Top Pro

Search as you type everywhere

You can start typing on the desktop or any folders and it'll just search for you. See More

Top Pro

Supports other explorers

It supports not only Windows Explorer but also XYplorer, Directory Opus, Total Commander and all the other explorer alternatives. See More

43 1

score 8 · Answer 3

WizTree

Top Pro

Exceptionally fast for NTFS drives

Because it reads the master file table (MFT) directly from NTFS file system. See More

Top Con

Intended for NTFS only

It'll work with any other file system but with the same speed as any generic space analyzer. See More

Top Pro

Handles "hard linked" files correctly - doesn't count them more than once

WizTree is faster and much more accurate than all the others as it properly handles hard linked files (doesn't count them more than once) so the total allocated size reported by WizTree will actually match the space used on the drive as reported by Windows. See More

Top Pro

Free

There is no limitation to use it See More

Top Pro

multiple view such as tree view, tree map, extension view, file view

unlike other similar apps which usually only offer single view, this apps offer multiple views See More

8 0

score 35 · Answer 4

Greenshot (for Windows)

Top Pro

Free and open source

Greenshot is licensed under GPL with source code available on BitBucket. See More

Top Con

This version only works on Windows, not Linux nor Mac

However, the same author now has a separate version of Greenshot for iOS, which is available (for a small fee) in the Mac App Store at https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/greenshot/id1103915944 See More

Top Pro

Allows annotating, highlighting and obfuscating screenshots

Top Con

Scrolling window capture is only working in Internet Explorer

Top Pro

Can capture an entire webpage

Instead of just capturing the visible portion of the page, this tool can capture all of the page in one image by scrolling through the page, taking images at set points and then stitching the images together. See More

Top Pro

Selecting custom rectangle is the default

Easy to use selection tool with a magnifier to select only the part of the screen that you need. See More

Top Pro

Freezes screen when you capture

When you enter a capture mode, the screen content is preserved as it was when you started capturing. See More

Top Pro

Can be quickly invoked with the print screen button

Pressing the print screen button will allow you to select the captured area. See More

Top Pro

Classic UI design makes it easy to use.

See All Experiences

35 2

score 50 · Answer 5

Wox

Top Pro

Extensible with addons

Addons such as choclatey and Clipboard are some of the more popular ones, but it stands to reason that just about anything will be extensible if someone writes a plugin in order to perform that specific function. See More

Top Pro

Allows for user customization

There are themes available for the app as well as plugins both of witch allow the user to customize the launcher to their liking. See More

Top Pro

Easily search the web

There is a built in web search function in the Wox launcher that allows users to easily search sites like IMDB or Wikipedia by prefixing their searches with keywords such as "wiki". See More

Top Pro

Really fast

Faster than most other launchers. See More

50 4

score 20 · Answer 6

WinDirStat

Top Con

Slow

There are faster programs. See More

Top Pro

Free / Open Source

GNU Public License (GPLv2). See More

Top Con

Classic UI

interface are old and cluttered See More

Top Pro

Color codes by file type

You can sort the list in the extension column (file type) globally or from parent folder selected. This is very helpful in case there are files of a specific type that you may not be aware of that's taking up too much space. Also, the colors correspond to the visual section. See More

Top Con

Treemaps can be confusing to some

Top Pro

Lightweight

Top Pro

PacMan Progress Bars

See All Experiences

20 2

score 91 · Answer 7

F.lux

Top Pro

Can help sleep better

Helps provide better sleep for more energy during the day. See More

Top Con

Takes a while to get used to

After installing F.lux, the screen will look a lot more yellow. This takes about a week to fully get used to. You can ease into it by setting the color temps higher than the recommended defaults. See More

Top Pro

Eases eye strain

Decreases color temperature at night, changing the normally fluorescent blue of an LCD monitor to a soft orange. Much easier on the eyes, especially in a low-light environment. See More

Top Pro

Subtle transition

The transition from daytime to nighttime color modes takes an hour by default and will detect your current timezone, meaning that it will happen in the background at sunset, often without you noticing. See More

91 7

score 32 · Answer 8

AutoHotkey

Top Pro

Easy To Learn but extremely Powerful

Basic Stuff is very easy and even advanced programming is possible, as the language is now able to use objects and classes and has a ton of free libraries and one of the most helpful and friendly communities on the Internet. See More

Top Con

Programming language is primitive

The base syntax, inherited from the first version of AutoIt, is primitive (a bit like an improved batch syntax). See More

Top Pro

Fully programmable

With a full programming language powering the hotkeys, including GUIs, it is powerful and flexible. See More

Top Pro

Powerful

Can interact with any Windows program / dialog / form, filling fields, submitting data, etc., without dependency on the window placement. See More

Top Pro

Allows for extremely easy remapping keys and buttons on your keyboard, joystick, and mouse

You can reprogram any key combination, including the Windows key with a syntax like this one: h::msgbox true that automatically remaps the H key to show a message box. See More

Top Pro

Scripting of common procedures

AHK allows full scripts to be created and used, it is very flexible. See More

Top Pro

Can map keys to scripts

Top Pro

Helpful forum

Top Pro

Good help documentation

See All Experiences

32 4

score 2 · Answer 9

Rapid environment editor

Top Pro

Easy

Editing of Windows environment variables is easy, splits long lines. See More

Top Con

Simple

Some may not consider it a "power" user tool. See More

Top Pro

Warnings

Displays wrong entries in red, e.g. paths that do no longer exist. See More

Top Pro

Resolve variables values, make easy a refactoring of PATH by extracting different elements in their own new variable

2 0

score 7 · Answer 10

Enso Portable

Top Pro

Extensible in Python

GChristensen recently upgraded Enso to Python 3.7, a great improvement over the original v2.5. You can write custom Enso commands in Python through its new web interface (or your favorite editor once you know where to put the files.) There's even an install command to pip install any Python package you need from PyPI. The sky's the limit. See More

Top Con

Comes with a reboot command

And a shutdown command too. Installing these is optional, and I recommend that you don't, especially if you use the quasimode. Unless you like losing your work. See More

Top Pro

Optional quasimode

Letting go of CapsLock just feels faster than hitting enter (sometimes too fast: be sure to disable the reboot command before turning this on!) Even with quasimode enabled, you can make it modal for that command by tapping Alt. See More

Top Con

No message log

According to Raskin's philosophy which inspired Enso, a pop up "dialog" is a bad design. The OK button is a useless input that interrupts your flow. Enso's pop up messages, therefore, are transparent and quickly fade away on their own (like Android Toast messages). Unfortunately, this also means you can easily miss them if you're not paying attention. Raskin's solution was to keep a message log you can refer back to, but Humanized never got around to implementing that for Enso. See More

Top Pro

Easily teach the app to open specific apps and sites

There is a learning function to the app that allows the user to teach the app to open specific items by typing "learn as open" and then clicking on the item one wants it to learn to open. See More

Top Con

Usage tends to be slowed by the caps lock

Function of the app relies on the caps lock key being pressed to enter commands, which can slow some people down by having to hold that key down when they are typing commands. See More

Top Pro

Can go to existing open windows

By using the "go" command users can switch to their already open windows making this a bit of a window navigator as well as a launcher. See More

See All Experiences

7 1

score 41 · Answer 11

VirtualBox

Top Con

Inferior performance

Apart from second-class performance in virtualization, there are some visual glitches with Windows 8.1 on Mavericks. See More

Top Pro

Free and mostly open source

VirtualBox is available for free with source code available here. A "VirtualBox Extension Pack" that includes virtual USB 2.0, VirtualBox RDP & PXE boot support is available only under a commercial license. See More

Top Con

Confusing interface and lacking usability features

VirtualBox might be a bit confusing for beginners - it requires an understanding of a lot more technical details than other VMs. See More

41 7

score 30 · Answer 12

Resonic

Top Pro

Clean interface

Top Con

No playlists

Or not yet, at least in the forums they say they're working on it See More

Top Pro

Fast

Top Pro

Lightweight

About 8 MB, and about 11 MB with the integrated Soundfont for its MIDI playback synthesizer. Native application, no dependencies (no .NET runtime). See More

Top Pro

Portable version available

Top Pro

Pure sound

Top Pro

Has a waveform seekbar and analyzers

Has a big single-click waveform seekbar and three real-time analyzer visualizations by default. See More

Top Pro

WASAPI/ASIO support

High-end audio cards can be easily used to their full potential without any additional software due to WASAPI (Player and Pro) and ASIO (Pro) support. See More

Top Pro

Supports all formats

WAV, BWF, RF64, AIFF, AIFC, FLAC, APE, ALAC, WV, TTA, DSF, DFF, MP3, MP2, MP1, M4A, MP4, AAC, MPC, MP+, OGG, OPUS, SPX, WMA, WMA Pro, WMA Lossless, MP4, WMV, AVI (certain codecs), MID, RMI, KAR, IT, XM, S3M, MTM, MOD See More

Top Pro

Most actions can be done with a single click

Most actions can be done without having to double-click. Things like navigating folders, playing files, seeking audio, changing volume are all done with a single-click. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (32 and 64-bit)

Price:FREE (Player)

Portable:Yes (ZIP download)

Status:Active

See All Specs

See All Experiences

30 6

score 36 · Answer 13

Cortana

Top Pro

Can recognize music

You can ask Cortana what music is playing and she will attempt to identify it. See More

Top Con

Functionality is limited on non-Windows devices

While Cortana is available on Android and iOS, certain features on those operating systems are either limited or non-existant. For example, there's no hands-free voice activation on iOS, and on Android it's only available on the homescreen and nowhere else, etc. See More

Top Pro

Will let you know when artists you're interested in play in your area

Cortana monitors your Bing search history, social network actions, music played, etc to find out what are your favorite artists and will let you know if they plan to play in your area. See More

36 7

score 22 · Answer 14

Spartan

Top Pro

Can automatically save screen shots as JPEGs

Top Pro

Encrypted log on system

Top Pro

Script Langauge

Allows you to program multiple copy / paste operations from a single click. See More

Top Pro

Clip Viewer

Just move the mouse over the clip slots and you see a preview in the viewer - Text or graphic. See More

Top Pro

Log on System

Spartan will not only fill in your user name and password but will also select the three characters that some sites ask for from your memorable word. See More

Top Pro

You can include the current date and time in clips

Have the current date and time added to your signature block in any format you wish. See More

Top Pro

The window can be sized separately for multiple monitors

If you have two monitors, for example, one standard VGA, and the other a high-res 28-inch, Spartan is the only app that lets you choose a separate magnification for each. See More

Top Pro

Auto shrinks digital photos when pasting

There is an option to have graphics reduced in size when pasted into emails or documents. Really useful if your pics are from a 15 Megapixel camera. See More

See All Experiences

22 5

score 698 · Answer 15

cmder

Top Pro

Extends the powerful ConEmu

Cmder builds on ConEmu console emulator, by adding enhancements from clink (such as bash-style completion in cmd.exe and PowerTab in powershell.exe) and optionally extending it with msysgit, that brings Unix tools to Windows. See More

Top Con

Issues with non-unicode characters

'ls' command can have issues with non-unicode characters such as cyrillic. As of 1.1.2, 'dir' can be used as a substitute that will properly display non-unicode characters. Unfortunately, it's an issue with msysgit that isn't being officially addressed (a workaround is available) thus no official ETA on the bugfix is available. See More

Top Pro

Minimal and portable version available

There is a portable version of cmder available which is just 10 MB in size. It can be put on an external device, like a USB stick, and run off it. There's no installation required. See More

Top Con

Not as portable as advertised

Even though cmder is advertised as a "portable terminal emulator for Windows", it's not adequately minimalistic to be considered truly portable. In fact, one of the dependencies required to use it is the Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015. See More

Top Pro

Monokai color scheme

Cmder pretties up the default look of ConEmu using Monokai color scheme out of the box and allows flexible color and transparency schemes, including custom out-of-focus opacity. See More

Top Con

Issues with escape codes

Sometimes it doesn't interpret terminal escape codes correctly and the output gets mangled using tmux over ssh, for instance. See More

Top Pro

File explorer integration

Cmder can be added to the right-click menu, allowing the user to start a terminal session from the selected directory with a "Cmder Here" command. The functionality can be enabled by opening up a terminal with administrator privileges, navigating to the Cmder folder and executing .\cmder.exe /REGISTER ALL. See More

Top Con

Slower than ConEmu

Top Pro

Works nicely with command line applications

Such applications include CMD, Powershell, and MinTTY. See More

Top Con

There is no ligatures support

As though the fonts like Fira Code or Hasklig work in Cmder, this enhancement for the Windows command prompt doesn't display ligatures in the above-mentioned fonts. See More

Top Pro

Has built-in Quake style drop-down mode

This is an extremely useful mode whereby the console hides and shows on ctrl+~ similar to a gaming console. This feature is inherited from ConEmu. See More

Top Con

Lots of conflicts with OS keybindings

By default, things lke ctrl-w will close your window unexpectedly when using nano or trying to delete a word in bash. See More

Top Pro

Integrates with graphical applications

Portable GUI applications can be integrated directly into the interface of the terminal emulator. For example, it's possible to integrate ST3 with cmder by moving the portable version of ST3 to /cmder/vendor/ and editing alias file in /cmder/config/aliases to include subl="%CMDER_ROOT%\vendor\Sublime Text 3\sublime_text.exe" $1 -new_console:s75V. Now writing subl in the command line will open ST3. The alias of subl can be changed to whatever's needed and similarly, the -new_console option's parameters can be changed to alter how the text editor integrates with the terminal emulator. It can be horizontal or vertical splits of varying sizes or tabs, etc. See More

Top Con

The portable (mini) version does not have UNIX commands

UNIX command support is only available for the full version. See More

Top Pro

Works with ZSH and Oh My ZSH through WSL (using ubuntu 18.04)

Set ZSH as shell using "chsh" command, and launch the console using "ubuntu1804" command. See More

Top Con

Very slow

Scrolling in vim lags the screen and can crash. See More

Top Pro

Highly flexible

Integrates with: cygwin mintty powershell msysgit See More

Top Pro

Works with VS Code, Hyper and IDEs

Cmder can be used with popular editors such as VS Code, which delivers aliases and clink as well as its color scheme to VS Code. It can also be used without ConEmu and Hyper as an alternative terminal emulator, which makes customizing the UI through NPM plugins much easier. See More

Top Pro

Works with WSL bash.exe

CMDer works great with the Windows Subsystem for Linux. Just change your startup task to point to the bash.exe file. See More

Specs

License:MIT

See All Experiences

698 92

score 175 · Answer 16

Chocolatey

Top Pro

Large number of applications/utilities available

Chocolatey has a massive community package repository of installs (more than 4,000 packages), and its open nature allows everyone to contribute more as needed. See More

Top Con

Sometimes hard to know which package to install from community package repository

The community repository contains multiple packages with similar names, making it hard to know which one to install. This is of course only related to using Chocolatey with the community repository, and you can look up the number of downloads to see which are the most widely used. See More

Top Pro

No crapware

Installs silently without crapware. See More

Top Con

Some package installs aren't good or polished or don't install well

Macrium downloads the online installer, 7-zip doesn't associate files, PotPlayer is outdated, etc. See More

Top Pro

Upgrade all software with one command

choco upgrade all is like Windows Update for all of your 3rd party software. ... or for the more succinct command use 'cup' !! See More

Top Con

Unable to easily change your install directory in the free version

In the free version you must know the native installer switches and pass them through with install args. In the paid versions you have a ubiquitous install directory option where Chocolatey determines how to properly pass that to the underlying native installer. Details on the differences - http://stackoverflow.com/a/19777121 See More

Top Pro

Scriptable

You can put Chocolatey install commands into your powershell scripts. See More

Top Con

Incomplete and conflicting package options

Not enough maintenance done to package library so there are different similarly-named or -versioned packages available, some broken and some not. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

Just open powershell and type choco install firefox to install Firefox, or choco install java to install Java. See More

Top Con

Uploading packages can be time consuming

It can take weeks to have a package accepted and with a fair amount of resubmitting for the dev/ maintainer. See More

Top Pro

Straightforward install process

To install Chocolatey simply copy the text from their site and paste it into either cmd.exe or powershell. See More

Top Pro

Manages the entire software lifecycle

From install to upgrade to uninstall, Chocolatey manages the whole process. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

It's licensed under Apache License 2.0 with source code available on GitHub. See More

Top Pro

Downloaded files are verified by checksums

Chocolatey requires checksums by default for files downloaded over non-secure locations and highly recommends it for HTTPS/SSL locations. It is moving towards requiring checkums by default for downloading from secure locations. See More

Top Pro

Decentralized package sources

Packages can be installed from multiple sources, including private sources. See More

Top Pro

GUI available

There's a package called ChocolateyGUI that can be installed and lets you use Chocolatey with a UI frontend. See More

Top Pro

Builds on technologies you know

Unattended installation and PowerShell. See More

Top Pro

Support and features available for organizations

There is a business edition available for organizations that need more support. The business edition also includes a Package Synchronizer, Package Internalizer, Package Builder, and a host of other features. See More

Top Pro

Can be extended with PowerShell

Chocolatey allows installing extension packages that add PowerShell functions to your package automation scripts. See More

Top Pro

Integrates with almost every configuration management / infrastructure automation / RMM tool

Chocolatey integrates with almost every infrastructure automation tool out there. https://chocolatey.org/docs/features-infrastructure-automation See More

Top Pro

More Selection

It has programs that can't be found in scoop or ninite. See More

See All Experiences

175 38

score 31 · Answer 17

Docker

Top Pro

Allows for portable application deployment

Docker creates a single object, containing an application with its dependencies, that can be moved between any docker-enabled machines, guaranteeing the same environment for application execution. See More

Top Con

Large image size

Top Pro

Git-like capabilities

Docker tracks changes in systems. It allows for commits and rollbacks and for quick deployment due to having to deploy only the updated code. See More

Top Con

Security concerns

Top Pro

Allows re-using components

Docker essentially allows creating boilerplate systems (a LAMP stack, for example) that can be used as a starting point on multiple projects. And you can find multiple such containers already created by people in their public registry. See More

Top Con

Kernel OS fragmentation

Top Pro

Automatic build

Allows automatically assembling a container from its source code. See More

Top Pro

Provides easy sharing and installation of containers through a public registry

Docker allows easily pushing and pulling containers to and from their public index.docker.io registry. Additionally, dotCloud maintains a list of official repositories of the more popular containers. See More

Top Pro

Application-centric

Top Pro

Works in virtualized environments

You can set up Docker within an already virtualized environment such as a virtual machine. This allows you to run Docker on Mac and Windows, among other use-cases. See More

Top Pro

Low overhead

Top Pro

Supports a wide range of isolation tools

Docker can be used with OpenVZ, systemd-nspawn, libvirt-lxc, libvirt-sandbox, qemu/kvm, BSD Jails, Solaris Zones, and chroot. See More

Top Pro

Tool ecosystem

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

See All Experiences

31 9

score 134 · Answer 18

ConEmu

Top Pro

Highly customizable

You can configure a plethora of settings, including shortcuts and aesthetics (background image, transparency, colors, and fonts) per software. See More

Top Con

Default look is somewhat unpleasant

In order to get a more pleasant look and feel, you may need to customize ConEmu yourself. See More

Top Pro

Can be used with any shell

ConEmu allows running CMD, PowerShell, Cygwin, PuTTY, TCC/LE, etc. See More

Top Con

It is slow

If you have a console process that outputs a lot, ConEmu will be the slowest option. Everything else will be faster. Even Terminus, which is, common, a packed web browser app. In my tests if ConEmu takes one unit of time, Terminus and Windows Terminal will be 0.6, FluentTerminal 0.35, Alacritty 0.3. See More

Top Pro

Explorer integration

ConEmu integrates well with Explorer. See More

Top Con

Layering of features per tab works with limited functionality

Can't do all of this, but it can theme colors per terminal: Tab 1: I want it transparent, with a fixed background, with a certain color scheme, running powershell Tab 2: Similar thing, but different bg, theme, and running posh as admin Tab 3: Similar thing, but different bg, theme, and running cygwin See More

Top Pro

Highly configurable hotkeys

Hotkeys allow the user to easily trigger an action and can be configured to their liking. See More

Top Con

Bad scrolling support

The mouse wheel scroll doesn't transfer to terminal applications by default. It moves to the blank space instead of scrolling actual text content. This is especially true for ConEmu where there doesn't seem to be a way to make it work better. See More

Top Pro

Tab support

ConEmu allows the user to create tabs (Win+W by default) for separate instances of the terminal window, allowing them to have both multiple shells and multiple instances of the same shell open. The user can also set up a startup directory for each tab and run each tab as a specific user or rights. See More

Top Con

Poor performance with WSL

Top Pro

Run DOS applications with DosBox

If you have both ConEmu and DosBox installed, you can run DOS applications (and games) within a 64-bit OS environment. See More

Top Con

Screen scrapes from real console

ConEmu always runs the standard Windows console - ‘real console’, but it is hidden most of time. This adds overhead, introduces another layer of complexity, and frequently creates irritating strange glitches (lost keys, messed up spacing) for heavy users. See More

Top Pro

Integrates with FarManager

ConEmu was originally designed as an updated front-end specifically for the FarManager, which means it has increased functionality. See More

Top Con

Only simple, black and white emoji

It's not much, but is sad we can't get colored emojis. May change soon, I'm working on a PR. See More

Top Pro

Progress Bar integration

ConEmu permits the user to check up on the progress of an operation with a quick glance at the taskbar, without needing to bring the app to the foreground. See More

Top Con

No remote connections

A terminal emulator should emulate a terminal, i.e. a local input/output device to a remote computer. ConEmu can only run local processes in a window (albeit nicer than the local command shell window). See More

Top Pro

Useful status bar details

Not only does the status bar show detailed information out-of-the-box, it can be configured for your specific needs. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

ConEmu is licensed under New BSD which is a class of very simple and liberal software licenses. See More

Top Pro

Actively developed

ConEmu is under active development. Updates roll out almost daily with bugfixes and new features. See More

Top Pro

Dynamically resize the window

You can change the width and height of the console window without having to reset your session. See More

Top Pro

Run simple GUI apps within a ConEmu tab

With -new_console and -cur_console switches you can run simple GUI apps in a ConEmu tab (or split). See More

Top Pro

Transparent, Quake-style mode

You can set up ConEmu as a transparent, Quake-style console by following these instructions. See More

Top Pro

Supports borderless mode

To put ConEmu in borderless mode: Set Main -> Appearance -> Frame Width to 0 See More

Top Pro

Supports Jump Lists

ConEmu allows pinning commands to Jump Lists (available in Windows 7 & 8; accessed by right-clicking the application in the taskbar), giving you quick access to common tasks and configurations. See More

Top Pro

Search in console input/output history

ConEmu supports searching in all text that has been printed or entered in the console history. See More

Top Pro

Box selection

ConEmu offers multiple, configurable ways of interacting with text, including an ability to select text in a rectangular way. See More

Top Pro

Built-in screenshot tool

The screenshot tool allows the user to capture their computer desktop or anything shown on their computer screen in a static image file. See More

Top Pro

Auto discovers your shells

Zero config gets you all your installed shells. See More

Top Pro

Closest replacement for iTerm2 users

Supports many of the features that iTerm users have become accustom to (like multiple tabs, highlighting, configurable scroll bars, decent support for themed color pallets to support basic/solarized/etc.). See More

Top Pro

Works well with Vim/Neovim on Windows

There were issues before that forced me to use graphical versions of Vim/Neovim, but latest versions of Conemu + Neovim, seem to be working much better on Windows now. See More

Top Pro

Works well with WSL/Tmux/Neovim/SSH

There were issues before in the WSL usage scenario that forced me to use an X gui terminal using X forwarding, but now Conemu is working great, and is the only terminal I use from Windows/WSL. See More

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134 32

score 430 · Answer 19

XYplorer

Top Pro

Frequent and regular updates

Bugfixes and new features are released frequently. Additionally, XYplorer can automatically check for updates and has convenient download and update functionality built-in. See More

Top Con

Single-threaded

Doesn't do internal multitasking so often you sit there waiting and waiting and waiting for the window to come back. See More

Top Pro

Extremely configurable

There are literally hundreds of ways you can customize this software. All the settings can be contained in a single configuration file, so you can easily create "profiles" as well. See More

Top Con

No FTP support

XY doesn't support FTP, SSH, FTPS, etc. See More

Top Pro

Lifetime license available

XYplorer probably has the best "bang for the buck". It surely has its cons but considering what one gets for a "small" one-time investment, probably no other comparable feature rich product offers a better license. The lifetime license ($63.95) includes all future updates for free, lets you install on any number of computers, and includes the portable version. See More

Top Con

32-Bit

Top Pro

Very reliable

It's small and fast, has lots of features, and helps you get your work done faster. See More

Top Con

No working high-dpi support

XYplorer will not properly scale when working in a mixed configuration consisting of both Full-HD and high-dpi screens. See More

Top Pro

Numerous filtering, sorting, and highlighting methods for files

Create rules and configurations to quickly identify and locate specific types of file and display them in various ways. See More

Top Con

Often unresponsive or crashes

When using features like preview the or other "advanced" features the program often reacts very slow or even crashes completly. Also when browsing many files the program does not like that and can really bog down. See More

Top Pro

Scriptable

Uses a very flexible scripting language that you can do many things with it. After learning it, one can get many other tools replaced in favor of a single centralized, extremely customize-able command center, plus writing one own's personal routines to fully perform finely-tuned file management. However, doing basic things like stringing together common renaming and moving tasks takes very little knowledge. Scripting is easy for beginners, is supported by the developer and the community, yet can be incredibly deep and powerful. See More

Top Con

Status bar not customizable

Users cannot customize the status bar. See More

Top Pro

Dual pane

Manage files with two panes which can be arranged horizontally or vertically - and each can have multiple tabs to boot. You can also easily save and reload open tabs as tab sets. See More

Top Con

No themes

You can customize toolbars, but there are no themes available. See More

Top Pro

Custom toolbar buttons

With its powerful scripting ability and the easily accessible menu identifiers, creating customized commands and toolbar buttons provides yet even further levels of usability specific to your needs. See More

Top Con

Separate tree for each panel is missing

The possibility of having a separate tree for each of the 2 panels is lacking. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

XYPlorer, in spite of its complexity and completeness, is very easy to use. Features are obvious. And where they're not obvious they can be discovered easily. An example is the ease of "Jump to Setting" which helps you effortlessly find which of many settings you're looking for. See More

Top Con

No plugin support

Top Pro

The catalog: an all-purpose area that can be customized for all of your needs

An all-purpose area that you can customize for all your needs. It can be a list of favorite directories, run scripts, replace the directory tree, be a program launch pad, and so much more. See More

Top Con

Poor touchscreen support

While an option exists to scale up icon sizes to improve touchscreen support, the program does not pan and scroll intuitively. See More

Top Pro

Portable

It doesn't require you to install it on your computer, allowing you to run it directly from a disk or from an USB flashdrive. See More

Top Con

No support for Windows libraries

You can't access your libraries through this software. See More

Top Pro

User interface is extremely customizable

XYplorer's user interface can be customized in almost every conceivable manner, from size and placement of various frame elements, to fonts, colors, toolbar buttons, if you can think it, you can probably do it. See More

Top Con

Cannot display files as grouped

Especially in thumbs view it would at times be nice to be able to group the files in the display. Sometimes it might also be nice in others views as well. XY is only able to sort the files in the display but not able to group, though it does support arbitrary sort order and advanced link types. See More

Top Pro

Logs plenty of actions for undo/redo

Up to 256 actions are logged and can be looked up and undone later in case of a mistake. Undo/Redo works even across sessions (i.e. after closing and restarting the app). See More

Top Con

The free version has been discontinued

Although it has just been discontinued as of 10th January 2017, it is still available for download at https://www.xyplorer.com/free.php. See More

Top Pro

Thumbnail viewing for images is both fast and customizable

If you're a photographer, wannabe photographer, or you just take a lot of photos, XYplorer is a great file manager for working with images. Combined with the Mouse Down Blow Up (MDBU) feature, previewing photos is very easy. See More

Top Pro

Extensive metadata

Mark files with colored labels, tags, comments, as well as multiple columns with user-defined metadata for everything from ratings, urls, and whatnot. See More

Top Pro

Customizable keyboard shortcuts

XYplorer is great for heavy keyboard users. Its many keyboard shortcuts are also fully configurable. Additionally, XYplorer offers multiple ways to navigate to file system using only a handful of keys. That said, one can do things with a mouse like press an icon in a custom column to run a script on the corresponding file or folder. Mousers are happy too. See More

Top Pro

Custom columns

Create custom columns to display all kinds of info snippets or even interactive links and buttons. See More

Top Pro

Portable file extensions

Associate file types with other portable applications on your USB stick. See More

Top Pro

Developer is active in the forum as well

While other competitors only offer a "community" forum where the developers are absent, in XY's forum the developer answers questions personally, quickly, and consistenly. See More

Top Pro

Faster than Windows Explorer ever thought of being

This is faster than Windows Explorer when combined this with TeraCopy. Currently, it is present in the right-click menu, but you can drag and drop it to copy with Windows File Explorer. See More

Top Pro

Quick audio preview

Can listen to audio files very easily with a single mouse click on the file icon. This includes FLAC support. See More

Top Pro

Custom file and folder icons

Add a custom icon to a set of files or folders based on file type, location, name (or part of name) for example: all files named XYplorer to have 'icon x' or all folders that contain the word XYplorer in the name to have 'icon y', size, date, name length, path etc. You can customize an infinite number of icons for an infinite number of files and/folders or even just a single one based on what ever combination you want. No extra files are created like with other programs that place an icon in each directory. The customized icons are stored within the "Icons" folder of the XYPlorer directory while the list of customized file/folder patterns as well as which particular icon to point to are stored within XYplorer .ini file. It's set and forget as all file/folder icon associations are applied globally. Meaning that all new files or folders that match your predefined pattern or instruction if you like will automatically be displayed with your chosen icon. Customized icons are also very very flexible. It's so easy to add, remove, change and fine tune your settings to your liking. To turn the customized icons on or off is simply a matter of pressing the handy toggle button. Further flexibility comes with the ability to turn on or off individual custom icons with a simple tick box. It is a bit of a learning curve to get the pattern (instruction to select certain files/folders to be associated with a particular icon) just right. But as results are immediately visible, it makes it easy to adjust accordingly to exactly what you want. There are some examples of these patterns included within the "Customize File Icons" UI or settings box to get you started by selecting the "I" button. A more extensive list is available in the XYPlorer help file. Once you get the hang of it though, the same patterns can be applied to other customizations in XYPlorer for example color filters or Ghost filters. See More

Top Pro

Folder sizes shown

Folder sizes and amount of files within the folders can be shown. This is very useful when trying to work out where the HDD space has gone. See More

Top Pro

Separate 32 and 64-bit context menus

This is very useful for accessing some context handlers or when using the portable version across several systems. See More

Top Pro

Clean, uncluttered interface

Clean and uncluttered interface, easy to concentrate on the files and folders that you need. See More

Top Pro

Per-user license

Just one license covers all of your computers. See More

Top Pro

Search and virtual folders

Its search ability and functions combined with a multitude of file actions and the ease of creating virtual folders is a major time saver. See More

Top Pro

Extremely versatile renaming.

Renaming can also be combined extremely easily in basic scripts for chaining and combining the strengths of the different types of renaming available. Can also rename based on metadata.You don't really need to "learn scripting" to chain a bunch of renaming commands. Multiscripts can even give you a menu of your chained renames - with nested menus if desired. It takes very little knowledge to be able to do this. One can even run such a script by drag and drop. See More

Top Pro

Easy to organize lots of files at once

Known as Branch View in XYPlorer. Select a folder or multiple folders and select Branch View to get a flat file view of the selected folder/s with files only, folders only or both. Alternatively, select Branch View to get a flat view of the current folder. Results can then be filtered, sorted, organised, moved, copied, renamed etc accordingly. Extremely useful if you have a lot of files to organise. See More

Top Pro

Branch view

Can show all files in a folder and all of its subfolders at once. See More

Top Pro

Preview files

From documents to audio and video. All files can be previewed from within the program and without the need to open other software packages. This is a very useful feature when working with multiple files. See More

Top Pro

Long path names supported brilliantly

Windows File Explorer, over time, will eventually allow you to create path lengths, usually accidentally, that are "very long" (ie too many characters based on Windows standards). And then, out of nowhere, you no longer have full functionality available to the directories and files in that long path. eg: you won't be able to open a file, or rename it, or copy it, or delete it, etc. In order to regain full functionality available to the files/ directories in that "long path", you have to go and manually shorten the "long path" length by deleting characters in filenames, directory names, etc, In other words, Microsoft will "allow" you to break the rules (.. ie in most cases without warning ), but then won't support the broken rules. This is where XYPlorer is super useful -- especially when you move big chunks of data from A to B -- you no longer have to care about long path name issues. See More

Top Pro

Can use system, XY's custom copy routines, Fast Copy, and Teracopy interchangably without scripting

Can save any set of command-line options with a friendly label. Switching is as easy as right-clicking on a button. See More

Top Pro

Can replace Windows Explorer

So that folders are automatically opened in a new tab of XYplorer rather than on Windows Explorer when called from other softwares. See More

Top Pro

Supports correction of illegal file and folder names

Easily rename a folder to make it legal. Search for dangerous unicode characters. Rename all files to ASCII if you wish. See More

Top Pro

Community support

Extensive and active support forum with unusually quick, thorough, and friendly assistance. See More

Top Pro

Nuke button

Files and folders can be "nuked" without needing to go through the recycle bin. See More

Top Pro

Asynchronous copy and move operations

It's possible to queue copy and move operations so that multiple large copy/move operations don't interfere with each other (disk thrashing) and you can continue working with the program. See More

Top Pro

Let's you select files by typing any word in the current directory

In windows file explorer when you want to select a file of the current directory, you have to type exactly the same name from the start of the file. In xyplorer you can type just part of it. Ex: filename "resume_work" With xyplorer you could just type work and it would show the file being marked (this is configurable). See More

Top Pro

HoverBox

A no-click preview to quickly see folder contents, pictures, videos, pdf, office files, archives (zip, rar...)... See More

Top Pro

FLAC as well as MP3 Support for Metadata and Previews

Most are MP3 only. See More

Top Pro

Has more features than any other file manager

None of the managers, including Opus, Speed commander, Total commander, F man, Xplorer2, Tabbles, etc., but none of them can compare with it in easy usage, features or customization. The author updates it very frequently and has added many users requests. See More

Top Pro

Exhaustive list of previewable archive formats

Works with help of 7zip, even a portable install works. See More

Top Pro

Option to disable lazy drag-and-dropping

A good practice to improve your workflow and eliminate accidental unwanted file movings to places! Brilliant! See More

Top Pro

Safety belts

Configurable options to prevent accidental file movements or deletions. See More

Top Pro

Dark mode

Latest beta-release introduces the "dark mode" that we already know from other software. It's auto-computed based on the current colour-settings and has 51 shades of darkness. Can be activated with a simple checkbox, no further tweaking required! See More

Top Pro

Huge feature list, something for everyone.

The extensive feature list will give you plenty to work with. See More

Top Pro

Fast and powerful search

Searching is extremely fast and thorough - no matter if you're looking for items by name, attribute, content, or trying to find duplicates (either with a selected hash or byte-to-byte). It allows you to search within your files, looking for specific terms, including wildcards and regular expressions. It also supports regular expressions and filter/sort your search results by file size, file modification date, etc. Can save complicated, often-used searches easily as "Search Templates" to reuse, tweak, or use in a script. Can set to instantly narrow a list as you type, or highlight if you prefer, with multiple options such as "Prefer Beginning of Column" or use currently sorted column. Supports Standard wildcards, Boolean, and Regex. See More

Top Pro

Mouse Down Blow Up feature

Mouse Down Blow Up is a quick file preview that pops up when you mouse-down on the icon or thumbnail of a file, and disappears on mouse-up. See More

Specs

430 93

score 59 · Answer 20

Ditto

Top Pro

It's reliable, fast and quick

It just works...always. It's fast and quick, which can save you thousands of hours. See More

Top Con

Minimizes after each paste

You have to activate it twice to paste twice. See More

Top Pro

Very configurable

You can set all sorts of things from size of database to size of individual clips, types of objects to copy/paste, which hotkeys to use etc. See More

Top Con

The UI is very confusing

I prefer a simpler and more modern UI. Then again, I very rarely need to configure anything in this program. Can't remember the last time I looked at the config! See More

Top Pro

Scriptable clips

Clips can be used/changed with scripts during copy or paste. See More

Top Con

uninstaller removes nothing

after uninstalling I had to remove almost every file manually from different directories since the actual uninstaller only displayed "other files still remain" See More

Top Con

Can't use any shortcut you wish

anything with spacebar, windows key is not possible. See More

Top Con

RTF bug is still present in latest Beta version

You can turn on the option to draw RTF text in the clip list, but it no longer works in Windows 10 Ditto (64bit), and the latest Beta version available today - which claims to have fixed the bug - still has the same bug. It will no longer draw RTF text as-is in the clip list. See More

Top Con

Does not support HDPI displays

On high DPI/resolution displays, the UI is very small. Practically unusable. See More

See All Experiences

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