Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to SafariWhen comparing Far Manager vs Winfile, the Slant community recommends Far Manager for most people. In the question“What are the best file managers for Windows?” Far Manager is ranked 7th while Winfile is ranked 22nd. The most important reason people chose Far Manager is:
Far Manager's interface encourages keyboard operation - all actions are easily accessible with keyboard shortcuts, you can quickly record macros for any repeatable action, there are no screen redraws if it is not necessary and that makes everything faster.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Keyboard-oriented
Far Manager's interface encourages keyboard operation - all actions are easily accessible with keyboard shortcuts, you can quickly record macros for any repeatable action, there are no screen redraws if it is not necessary and that makes everything faster.
Pro Open source
Released under BSD license.
Pro Two-panel interface
Pro Many plugins
There are may of them, and you can write them in any languages, including Python.
Pro Editor with syntax highlighting
Every Far feature is also true for its editor. You can setup an external editor if you like, but the included editor works really well and features syntax highlighting.
Pro Easily recorded macros
Hit "Ctrl-." and start recording your boring sequence. Hit "Ctrl-." again to assign it a key. You can use Lua if you need more advanced macros.
Pro Numeric sorting option
E.g. readme-9.txt before readme-10.txt
Pro Extremely fast
Pro Offline context help
Just press F1 when you need it. No internet connection or browser is required.
Pro Themeable
Fully themeable, allowing you to change the colors of every part of the interface.
Pro Scrippting support via LUA
Pro Open source
Now open source and receives occasional updates and fixes.
Pro It's really simple
Winfile dates back to a time when you had to fit your software on a floppy disk. As such, it isn't weighed down by as much of things like scripting malarkey.
Cons
Con Blocking operations
Operations such as copy, move, delete, etc are blocking, and you have to wait for them to complete before you can continue.
Though you can cancel the operation with the escape key.
Con Only for Windows
Con Always uses monospace font
Which makes long file names look extremely wide
Con Does not support scrolling with mouse
With plugin
Con Text-based interface
Far Manager does not use a GUI like most windows applications nowadays. This may prove difficult to use for people who are not familiar with text-based user interfaces.
Con Folder shortcuts not available in Alt+F1/F2 menus
Con It has the fresh look of a 30 year old program
Because it is. But some might actually like it for that, unless you really can't deal with the small icons and lack of icons to define things.
