Multi Commander 

Despite the evident progress of Windows as an operating system across its various versions and releases, some components seem to be frozen in time. This is the case of the Windows Explorer, which hasn’t evolved much in, at least, the last decade. Multi Commander tries to make up for this lack of evolution by offering you a free, full-featured, and multi-tabbed file manager that makes its Microsoft counterpart pale in comparison.

Multi Commander combines its two-panel interface with the use of tabs to provide you with a versatile way of navigating through your files and folders without having to open an insane number of windows. The program will let you see a set of folders in the left-hand panel and the files included in one of them in the right-hand panel. Or you can view the files and folders of one of your drives in one panel and those from a different drive in the other. Or you can open multiple tabs in each panel and combine them in whichever way you need. The possibilities are endless, and viewing files and folders is just the beginning.

To be fair with Windows Explorer, I have to admit that it also allows you to open an extra panel to see the details of the selected file and a different one to preview images. I find the latter option really useful, and it’s probably the only thing I missed while moving around Multi Commander’s functionality. To make up for that, this free tool comes with an image viewer, but that one opens on a different window.

In every other aspect, Multi Commander beats Windows Explorer clearly. It comes with a wealth of features that either Windows has failed miserably to implement or that are scattered all over the different menus and sections of the operating system. With this program, you will benefit from having a file renaming tool, a duplicates finder, a shortcut commands customizer, a set of buttons to perform one-click file selections (by type or extension), and direct links to some useful Windows tools (such as the calculator or the notepad) all in one single and intuitive window.

This is mainly the beauty of Multi Commander – its compact design and its clever use of panels and tabs to provide the highest level of usability possible. Add to this its extensive functionality, with all those file management features that Windows keeps ignoring release after release, and you’ll end up with an excellent and much better alternative to Windows Explorer. If only Multi Commander could be set to override the existing Windows tool so that it’d become the default file manager...