The Best Alternative File Browser for Mac
The Finder isn’t perfect, and the Mac developer community has created plenty of alternatives. While there are cheaper options, Path Finder is our choice for the best thanks to its excellent power user features, deep OS X integration, and customizability.
Path Finder
Platform: Mac OS X
Price: $40 (with a 30-day free trial)
Download Page
Features
- Dual-pane file browser (or single—it’s your choice)
- Cut and paste.
- Integrates into Mac OS X to work as a full Finder replacement.
- Drag and drop files into a temporary stack so you can perform actions on multiple files from different sources.
- Tabbed browsing.
- Create bookmarks for common locations.
- Sort by folders first, or limit a list of files by name or extension.
- The command-line is built in.
- Create and convert disk images.
- Subversion support.
- Window drawers that can contain frequently used applications and recent documents.
- Navigate through your favorite directories via drop down menus at the top of Path Finder windows.
- Save different sidebar configurations and swap them quickly and easily.
Where It Excels
In a lot of ways, Path Finder is the more powerful version of the Finder you always wanted. It probably has more navigation options than you could ever need, but you use the ones that work from you and ignore/disable the rest. It really shines in the places where it solves common Finder issues. For example, if you want to create a zip archive of files in different folders or copy those same files all at once, the Finder would require you to move them all to one location first. Path Finder will let you drop them in a temporary stack so you can aggregate files for a specific purpose without changing their location. Path Finder also adds the sorely desired feature of cut and paste. Navigation-wise, you have just about every possibility you could want, including tabbed browsing and folder menus right in the Path Finder windows. Despite all of this, Path Finder still feels like the Finder. You’re not getting thrown into some brand new idea that you have to figure out. Instead, you’re getting something that works with the features you want.
Where It Falls Short
It’s expensive and it’s not as quick as the Mac OS X Finder, but neither of those things should come as much of a surprise. You can’t throw a rock without hitting a pricey Mac app and, despite the Finder’s shortcomings, it’s tough challenge to perform better than the native option. Apple sort of has the advantage there. But if you’re not deterred by the price and are willing to trade a little performance for all the features you ever wanted in the Finder, Path Finder will serve you pretty well. The only thing it’s sorely missing, in my opinion, is file copy queuing—but you can say that about pretty much every file browser. UPDATE: Apparently file copy queuing is being added in Path Finder 6!
for Mac » href=»https://filebrowse.en.softonic.com/mac»>FileBrowse for Mac
In English
- 4 User Rating
Softonic review
Cool file browser
FileBrowse is a powerful, trial version Mac program, belonging to the category Utilities with subcategory Finder Add-ons & Replacements.
More about FileBrowse
Since the software joined our selection of software and apps in 2006, it has already reached 1,207 downloads, and last week it gained 3 downloads.
About the download, FileBrowse is a not that heavy program that does not require as much storage space than the average program in the section Utilities. It’s very heavily used in Belarus, United States, and Sweden.
This software is available for users with the operating system Mac OS X and prior versions, and it is only available in English. The software version is 1.0.1 and it has been updated on 9/27/2006.
Author’s review
FileBrowse is a new, easy-to-use file/media browser for Mac OS X with many unique features, such as 3D icons/thumbnails, large in-context previews, and powerful grouping and sorting.
FileBrowse can show thumbnails for many file types, not only for images. And folder icons even show the items inside! So you don’t always have to open a folder to see its contents.
It’s extremely likely that this software program is clean.
What does this mean?
We have scanned the file and URLs associated with this software program in more than 50 of the world’s leading antivirus services; no possible threat has been detected.
This software program is potentially malicious or may contain unwanted bundled software.
Why is the software program still available?
Based on our scan system, we have determined that these flags are possibly false positives.
What is a false positive?
It means a benign program is wrongfully flagged as malicious due to an overly broad detection signature or algorithm used in an antivirus program.
It’s highly probable this software program is malicious or contains unwanted bundled software.
Why is this software program no longer available in our Catalog?
Based on our scan system, we have determined that these flags are likely to be real positives.
We’d like to highlight that from time to time, we may miss a potentially malicious software program. To continue promising you a malware-free catalog of programs and apps, our team has integrated a Report Software feature in every catalog page that loops your feedback back to us.
Flag any particular issues you may encounter and Softonic will address those concerns as soon as possible.
The best free file manager for Mac OS and not only
Overview of free file managers for Mac OS X
When you use your Mac, file browsing options are important. The default file browser for Mac OS is Finder. However, many Mac users find it to be lacking in a few essential features like dual window mode. Fortunately, there are many alternatives — paid and free. Among the free file managers can be noted Moroshka, Midnight commander and muCommander.
Moroshka can be installed directly from the App Store. It looks like this:
The program makes a positive impression and has features such as bookmarks, archieves support (writing zip, 7zip and tar), hex viewer. The program is lightweight and runs fast. However the source code is closed.
The second file manager is Midnight Commander. It work in the console and is open source. It can be installed with ports or brew. Midnight Commander looks like this:
The main disadvanatage of MC is console.
Third file manager, attracting attention is muCommander. It is written in Java and runs on all major desktop Java-platforms — Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Solaris, FreeBSD. It’s open source. The applications looks like this (muCommander support color themes):
muCommander
- Virtual file system with support FTP, SFTP, SMB and HTTP/HTTPS
- Bookmarks
- Packing an unpacking ZIP, TAR and GZip archieves
- Themes support
- Configurable hotkeys
- Crossplatform
- Sending files via e-mail
- Open source
- No file search
- Bad text editor and viewer (the maximum filesize is 1 MB, large files open slowly, only text files and images)
- Launch takes some time (because it’s java)
- Some minor bugs (for example some hotkeys doesn’t work on Mac OS)
- Doesn’t support packing to 7zip archieves
- Doesn’t contains hex viewer/editor
I cloned the source to github and made a few fixes
Version of 2.01.2014
Features and fixes:
- Implemented Find File dialog. Hotkeys F3 / F4 allows open the viewer / editor for found files
- Fixed hotkeys for viewer and editor — hotkeys Ctrl+S and Ctrl+F (have not worked) replaced for Mac OS to Cmd+S and Cmd+F
- Added Terminal command (F2) for Mac OS and WindowsXP
- TextArea component replaced to RSyntaxTextArea big files open now much faster, the maximum file size is increased from 1 to 10 megabytes
- The last entered string stored in the search dialog text for viewer/editor
- Added commands for jumping to next (hotkey = space) and previous (hotkey = backspace) image for image viewer
- The editor / viewer windows are enlarged to full screen size
- Added new dark theme — «Trol» (see screenshoot above)
- Fixed issues with theme editor panel
The easiest way to install the updated muCommander muCommander on MacOS — download dmg image from the official site and then replace the file /Applications/muCommander.app/Contents/Resources/Java/mucommander.jar on the updated jar.
Version of 14.01.2014
Features and fixes:
- Syntax highlight in viewer and editor and some predefined themes for that
- Store caret position, encoding and syntax type in viewer and editor for last 100 files
- F3 hotkey for directory calculate it size, F4 hotkey shows permission setup dialog
- Multithread loading — muCommander starts faster now
- Commands «goto next» and «goto prev» for images viewer
- Implemented undo/redo commands in editor
- Simplified files mark/unmark dialog — only file mask with * and ? macroses
- Added PDF viewer
- The application compiled for Java 1.7, the older JVM doesn’t supporting now
- Fixed viewer and editor issues for Windows
- Fixed bugs in theme editor
- Fixed some other bugs
Version of 10.05.2014
Features and fixes:
- HEX file viewer
- New images formats support. Now muCommander supports the following image formats: png, gif, jpg, bmp, wbmp, ico, psd, tga, tiff, pnm, pbm, pgm, ppm, scr.
- StatusBar for images viewer window
- Search history for text and filenames
- Support of non-latin filenames in RAR-archives
- Fixed issues with RAR-archives
- Improved win1251 charset autodetection
- Autodetection of XML-files for text-viewer
- Fixed some other bugs
Version of 23.06.2014
Features and fixes:
- Saving the size and position of windows and dialogs
- Speed optimization of opening for viewers and editors
- Migration to 7-Zip-JBinding for 7zip decompressor. Decompression speed should increase. Fixed issues with temporary files in mucommander directory on decompression.
- Implemented calculator with support of hex (etc. 0x12), octal (etc. 0123) and binary (etc. 0b10101010) numbers (Alt-C)
- Symlink creator (Alt-F7)
- Symlink editor (F4)
- Fixed some minor issues
