When comparing Total Commander vs A Photo Manager, the Slant community recommends Total Commander for most people. In the question“What are the best file explorers on Android?” Total Commander is ranked 3rd while A Photo Manager is ranked 17th. The most important reason people chose Total Commander is:
Supports plugins for compression, file system, and file types.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Plugins
Supports plugins for compression, file system, and file types.
Pro Can replace a lot of utility tools
There are a lot of built-in utility tools and plug-ins. There's multi-file renamer, verify file checksum to ensure download content integrity, sync directory tool, etc.
Pro Life-time license
Once purchased you can use it as long as you like and never have to pay again.
Pro Layout increases productivity
The dual-pane layout makes normal file operations (like move & copy) easy.
Pro Useful multiple advanced options
Show hidden files, show differences between directories, FTP connections, coding and decoding (MIME, l).
Pro Very customizable
Total Commander is extremely flexible, with plenty of customizable options such as changing the color scheme, customizing menus, and editing shortcuts.
Pro Works even when Windows is very unstable
Pro Productive
Even if you have not learned the keys from DOS NortonCommander, learning them now will make you more productive when dealing with files.
Pro Powerful file search
The file search has many features, like using regular expressions to find the file names or even inside the content of the files. It can filter by file size, date and others, or even find duplicate files.
Pro Compare files and show differences
Can compare and show text file differences (diff) line-by-line, even character-by-character. Very useful for programmers. Can compare binary files, telling if files have the same content or not.
Pro Batch-rename files and folders
Sometimes you want to rename a bunch of files for some reason.
Eg:
file1-useless info blah blah.mp8
file2-useless info blah blah.mp8
file3-useless info blah blah.mp8
file4-useless info blah blah.mp8
file5-useless info blah blah.mp8
At once you can remove the "-useless info blah blah" in all file names. Or you could change the "file" to "my_super_file" to all at once.
The possibilities are endless.
Pro Saves time
Pro Cloud plugin
Pro Customizable tabs
Allows renaming tabs and setting maximum tab text length, which is very convenient. You can also lock tabs in two modes: a) change dir not allowed and b) change dir allowed (but it would return to the original path once you browse another tab). It doesn't allow assigning different colors to each tab, though.
Pro On copy/move it can both avoid overwrite the destination file AND losing the copied file at the same time
Sometimes you need to copy/move a bunch of files to a folder that already has files. During the copy when Total Commander encounter files in the destination folder that has the same name of the copied files, it allows you to choose auto-rename the copied files or the destination files. It's beautiful.
Pro Convenient
Pro Free
Pro Easy for language translation
Pro Forget about the mouse
The total commander is convenient to use both with the mouse and exclusively using the keyboard.
But using only the keyboard gives it a big increase in the speed of work because you do not aim at your mouse. You need some time to get used to it, but it's really worth it.
Pro Incremental photo backup to zipfile
i.e. all photos that where added/modified since last backup can be added to a zip file on an attached usbstick
Pro Support for virtual albums
... that are independant of locaton in the physical-filesystem.
Pro Powerful geotagging/openstreetmap integration
A map shows where photos where taken. if you zoom in you see more details. Geotagging: select one or more photos + "set geo" + pick a point in the map ==> the selected images get that point. Filter images through the map: after selecting an area in the map (i.e. North Germany), the gallery will only show images from North Germany.
Pro It is free
Open-source, no ads, no user tracking.
Pro Can handle big image collections
15000+ images in 1000+ folders.
Pro Find photos by tags (aka keywords)
Pro Build in Vault mode
If enabled only selected/filtered Images can be seen. This allows you to savley hand over your android phone to someone else and allow him/her to view only those images in Gallery-View, Geographic-Map and Image-View that you have chosen before.
Pro Exif-Tag support (Edit and Find)
Pro Quick hirarchical folder navigation
Only folders that contain pictures are shown.
Cons
Con Cannot display background colors for file names
While it can display different colors (even based on filters) for the text color of those file names, but not for the background color.
Con Very slow on loading network shares
Con Proprietary
Total Commander offers a free 30-day trial, after which the cost of the program is $44.
Con Classic Interface
Con Need to spend a lot of time for custom configuration
Need to spend a lot of time for custom configuration, many features of the steps are very cumbersome to reduce operating speed.
Con It is not available on the Google Play Store
You have to download it via f-droid.org store.