File Under Cool: 5 Windows 11 File Explorer Alternatives (2024)

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Files

Files (which appears as “Files App” in the app store) is an excellent, popular, free, and open-source replacement for the Windows 11 Files Explorer. You can get it in three ways: download it directly from the Microsoft Store app where it won a Best app award, download it from the organization’s website, or get its source code from GitHub.

The Files app uses the same new icons that arrived with Windows 11 and adds tabs and an experimental tagging feature you can enable for folders and files. Choose a design theme for added personalization. Files lets you use a Mac Finder-like column layout or a dual-pane view. Like the stock Explorer, Files App works with cloud storage services such as OneDrive (the default) and Google Drive, and it can preview and unzip files. The program is often updated with new features, such as the recent Compact mode.

One Commander

One Commander came in as a runner-up in the Microsoft Store App Awards. It’s free, with a Pro version available for $24 for business use. One Commander offers dual-pane browsing, tabs, columns navigation, tags (including color tags), editable themes, and built-in preview, among other features. When you first install One Commander, you get a choice of layout and whether or not to calculate folder content size, which increases CPU usage but is ideal for people who care about disk space usage.

Each panel can have multiple tabs, and you can stack the panels vertically or use a horizontal arrangement. When you dig into a folder structure, columns for the earlier folder collapse with small labels, like C:, Users, Documents, and so on. You can choose between the colorful new Windows 11 standard folder icons and flat, line-drawn ones. The program has a wealth of settings for detailed configuration. A portable option can be installed from a USB stick to any folder, letting you move your settings to another PC.

RX Explorer

Shrestha Files Pro X

TagSpaces

As its name suggests, TagSpaces is all about tagging your files and folders for organization with not only keywords, but also color tags and descriptions. As such, it looks the least like File Explorer among the options included on this list. It’s available for Android, Linux, and macOS as well as Windows. It’s free, but a Pro version adds features such as the ability to add descriptions and geotags. You can either have it change the filename to include the tag (e.g., changing photo.jpg to photo[sunset].jpg) or use a sidecar file to save that information. An optional browser extension lets you clip web images and add them to your collection.

TagSpaces doesn’t offer tabs or columns but you can choose compact and large modes in addition to the standard mode. It didn’t automatically show my OneDrive folders as File Explorer does, but adding them is simple. Nor is there an Open With option—files open with their default app—but you can open files in File Explorer from TagSpaces for that choice. TagSpaces excels at previewing your content. Unlike the other apps mentioned here, the utility has ambitions to be more than a mere File Explorer substitute: It’s available in a version for work teams with features like a Kanban perspective, cloud hosting via AWS, and centralized management. Pricing for those tiers starts at $39 per year per user for Pro and $48 for Pro Web.