I made an account to thank you for this. I've been looking for a _fast_ alternative to explorer since Windows XP. But one that doesn't require a change in workflow. This is the fastest I've tried by far. I've only been using it for 5 minutes, but I'm sold. Earlybird discount too!

Thank you for posting this, and if you have any other speedy apps you'd recommend I'd welcome suggestions. Mine top suggestions are Speedcrunch [0] (calculator app) and Everything [1] file search combined with Listary [2]

[0] https://github.com/ruphy/speedcrunch

[1] https://www.voidtools.com/

[2] https://www.listary.com/

(For reference, I've tried Total Commander, DOpus, Files, Explorer XP, XY Explorer, Explorer ++, FreeCommander, Double Commander, Q-Dir)

Everything (the tool) is ridiculously fast, I’ve used it for quite a while now and it’s nice to see it mentioned here.

I'll check these out, thanks!

I learned about File Pilot (whose author posts here: https://x.com/vkrajacic) from Casey Muratori (https://x.com/cmuratori) who pushed it a bunch because he loves fast things.

Listary has slowed down tremendously ever since they included search. For a launcher I'm still using "find as run robot", which truly is a 90s era piece of softer but works blazingly fast. I do have a plug-in to tie it into search everything.

Have you tried xplorer²? I only know about it because I was into Windows programming using the WTL eons ago.

In my opinion Total Commander has always been the most ideal (also fast) file management tool since Windows 3.x. It was named Windows Commander back in the days but it still supports Windows 3.x as Total Commander.

I never knew it was a Windows program. I've been using it on my Android phones for years.

All of these ‘fast’ file managers have a big problem: they don't support system calls to dialog windows.

Mostly users interact with the explorer in this scenario to open/save a file in ‘BrowserOS’

>> they don't support system calls to dialog windows.

It's a little unclear what you mean exactly. Do you want the browsing experience changed for the system's file open/save dialogs? i.e. a third-party file explorer opens instead with all of it's features.

Do you know how it compares to Dolphin for interacting with very large (100k+ files) directories? Dolphin is the only file manager I’ve found that keeps up with the large directories- GNOME (Nautilus) and Windows Explorer are dogshit slow, even after the file list populates. macOS Finder is somewhere in the middle but still very slow.

Check out ROX-Filer https://github.com/rox-desktop/rox-filer

When you have 100k+ files sometimes the filesystem itself matters. Have you set your expectations appropriately, aka compared it to a raw ls/dir ?

I like dolphin but pcmanfm is fastet

how does it compare to directory opus?