--- title: "Total Commander - The Ultimate File Manager?" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2006/12/21/total-commander-the-ultimate-file-manager.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2006/12/21/total-commander-the-ultimate-file-manager.html" published: "2006-12-21T09:00:47" updated: "2006-12-21T09:00:47" tags: ["Cool Tools", "General Software Devel..."] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "A friend asked what is that weird program I use to manage files. I told her it was Total Commander , my true love when it comes to file management. It helps me use FTP, Multiple rename, zip, rar and synchronize folders…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # Total Commander - The Ultimate File Manager? By Roy Osherove December 21, 2006 In [Cool Tools](https://osherove.com/blog/category/cool-tools), [General Software Devel...](https://osherove.com/blog/category/general-software-devel) **Historical article** · Originally published December 21, 2006; technical details may be outdated. A friend asked what is that weird program I use to manage files. I told her it was [Total Commander](http://www.ghisler.com/), my true love when it comes to file management. It helps me use FTP, Multiple rename, zip, rar and synchronize folders in one tools. It can be totally keyboard-driven and customized, and it has TONS of plugins to view any file type (like digging inside ISO file like they were zip files as an example). The new version supports tabs and many features which you can't really find in windows Explorer. Highly recommended. However, there are others out there, who prefer other programs to manage their file system, which have many of the same features, with different levels of usability and configurability built in. It's a religion, really. Some of the best known ones out there are: - [Total Commander](http://www.ghisler.com/) (The image on the site looks hideous, but it is truly a monster for productivity) - [Directory Opus](http://www.gpsoft.com.au/) (better interface, lots of shortcuts - but Total Commander just feels more "natural" to me. A friend of mine swear by it though) - [Servant Salamander](http://www.altap.cz/salam_en/index.html) (I know some people who really like it - [FAR Manager](http://farmanager.com/) (text only) (Why oh why use a dos based tool these days? though some people love it) - [Xplorer(2)](http://zabkat.com/tour1.htm) (I don't like it too much- but it seems to be a favorite for those who really like clicking mouse buttons. - [Accelman](http://www.flexigensoft.com/file-manager/screenshorts) - Seems like an interesting new one I hadn't seen before - [XYplorer](http://www.xyplorer.com/shots.htm) seems interesting as well! What are your favorites? (Here's a [long discussion with many other suggestions](http://alexking.org/blog/2005/01/27/windows-explorer-replacement)) ## More in Cool Tools [All posts in Cool Tools](https://osherove.com/blog/category/cool-tools) - Mar 16, 2007 ### [The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities - By DonationCoder.Com](https://osherove.com/blog/2007/3/16/the-46-best-ever-freeware-utilities-by-donationcodercom.html) - Feb 5, 2007 ### [NDepend 2.0 - Beast, not Beauty](https://osherove.com/blog/2007/2/5/ndepend-20-beast-not-beauty.html) - Dec 4, 2006 ### [HnD - Open source forums and support backed by LLBLGen 2.0](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/12/4/hnd-open-source-forums-and-support-backed-by-llblgen-20.html) - Nov 28, 2006 ### [Cool Promotion - Automise for $20 for 24h window](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/11/28/cool-promotion-automise-for-20-for-24h-window.html) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/