Pretty please at least try DirectoryOpus

Hey Paul:

Listening to today’s FRD, and you’re ranting against Windows’ File Explorer. A beg you, please take the free trial of DirectoryOpus. https://www.gpsoft.com.au/ If you’re dragging and dropping and what not, its side by side mode should really make you happy. It’s designed to be a complete replacement for the built in file explorer, to the point you can have it install itself in the registry to open when things like browsers open a file location. (By default it will also launch when you double click the desktop.) It’s highly configurable and scriptable. I prefer to use the details view with alternating line colours, as one example of a customization. It also has plenty of built in viewers/previewers, and it can even handle [S]FTP file transfers for you (as a low cost optional addon.) I also really like “find as I type” where you can start typing a portion of a file name, and it will move you to the first file with that text in the name, and then you can continue finding more if you want using CTRL-F (this feature is time sensitive, after some timeout, CTRL-F will bring up a different UI for file finding, that supports regex and all sorts of other options, and will open the found files in a new pane to make working with them easier, but you can hit back to get back to where you were. It will also integrate with the Everything search app, if that’s your jam.)

There are two downsides I can thing of. One is it’s not a “modern” app. That doesn’t matter to be, but since you said you liked the look of the “Files app” it may matter to you. The other downside is it’s not free, but I suspect you won’t care if it makes your file operations faster and more efficient.