A modern, high-performance dual-pane file explorer for Windows
Nexplorer combines the power of Directory Opus-style advanced file management with Far Manager-style keyboard workflows — all in a native Windows 11 desktop app built with WPF and .NET 10.
100% developed by AI (GitHub Copilot). Every line of code, UI layout, and architectural decision was generated by GitHub Copilot.
- Key Highlights
- Features
- Keyboard Shortcuts
- Settings
- Architecture
- Getting Started
- Building from Source
- License
| Dual-pane layout | Side-by-side panels with independent tabs, history, and navigation |
| Embedded terminal | Multi-tab PowerShell/CMD with ANSI colors, auto-complete, and aliases |
| Keyboard-first | 40+ shortcuts, Far Manager-style F-key toolbar, rebindable keys |
| Git built-in | Source control panel, commit/push/pull, log viewer, file diffs |
| Space Radar | Interactive treemap visualization of disk usage — drill down into any folder |
| Blazing fast | Async streaming enumeration, UI virtualization, handles 500k+ files |
| 4 themes | Dark, Light, Modern, and System (auto-detect) |
- Side-by-side panels — each pane with its own tab strip, history stack, and address bar
- Multi-tab support — open, close, duplicate, and switch tabs per pane (
Ctrl+T,Ctrl+W,Ctrl+D) - Active pane indicator — accent-colored border highlights the focused panel
- F-key toolbar — bottom bar with 10 function buttons for common operations (Copy, Move, Rename, Search, Compare, etc.)
- Cross-pane operations — copy (
F5) or move (F6) files between panels in one keystroke - Drag & drop — drag files between panes (copy by default,
Shiftto move) - Rubber-band selection — click-and-drag to draw a selection rectangle
- Status bar — item count, selection size, and load time
| Mode | Description |
|---|---|
| Details | Columns for icon, name, type, size, and modified date with sortable headers |
| Large Icons | 48×48 grid with wrapped file names |
| Small Icons | 16×16 compact horizontal grid |
| List | Single-column vertical list with 16×16 icons |
| Tiles | 32×32 icons with name, size, and type metadata |
- Back / Forward / Up with per-pane history stacks (
Alt+Left,Alt+Right,Backspace) - Editable address bar — type a path and press Enter
- Folder tree sidebar — hierarchical tree with lazy-loaded children
- Quick Access — Home, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Music, Videos
- Favorites — pin folders for fast access (persisted to JSON)
- Recent locations — last 5 visited folders, persisted across sessions
- Drive listing — all logical drives with native Windows icons
- Refresh —
Ctrl+Rreloads directory contents
- Copy / Cut / Paste (
Ctrl+C,Ctrl+X,Ctrl+V) with async operation engine - Copy as Path (
Ctrl+Shift+C) — copies full paths to clipboard - Delete (
Del) — Recycle Bin integration with confirmation dialog - Rename (
F2) — inline rename that selects only the name (not the extension) - New Folder (
F7) / New File (Ctrl+N) — creates and enters rename mode - Open With — Windows "Open As" dialog
- Properties (
Alt+Enter) — native Windows file properties dialog - Copy queue — sequential operations with pause, resume, and cancellation
- Conflict resolution — Skip, Replace, Rename (auto-increment), or Ask
- Progress tracking — bytes copied, percentage, current file name
- Long path support — handles paths beyond the 260-character limit
Nexplorer includes a full-featured embedded terminal that rivals standalone tools.
Terminal Panel
- Multi-tab terminals with add, close, duplicate, and split (horizontal/vertical)
- Shell support — PowerShell and CMD with configurable profiles
- ANSI color rendering — full SGR support: 8 basic, 8 bright, 256 palette, and 24-bit RGB
- Working directory sync — terminal tracks the active pane's directory
- Git branch badge — shows branch name with ahead/behind/dirty indicators in the tab
Smart Auto-Complete
- Inline ghost suggestions (like PSReadLine) — accept with
TaborRight Arrow - History completions — prefix + contains matching, weighted by frequency
- File system completions — paths and directories
- CLI tool suggestions — 16 tools including
git,docker,npm,dotnet,kubectl,terraform,cargo,go,aws,az, and more - Bang commands —
!!re-run last,!nrun nth,!prefixrun matching command - Tab completion cycling through file system entries
- Reverse history search (
Ctrl+R) — interactive incremental search
Built-in Commands
clear/cls,alias/unalias,env/export,jobs/kill,metrics,theme
Execution Features
- Background jobs — append
&to run commands in the background - Execution metrics — duration and exit code for every command
- Structured error output — color-coded error summaries
- Command aliases — user-defined, persisted, shell-specific
Persistent Command History
- Stored in JSON — command text, directory, shell type, timestamp, exit code, duration
- Filterable history panel with text search and color-coded badges
- Up to 500 entries (configurable), survives crash and restart
- Fuzzy search support (configurable)
- Dedicated search window (
F9/Ctrl+Shift+F) with rich criteria:- Name query, root path, recursive toggle
- Regex support
- Min/max file size filter (KB)
- Modified after/before date pickers
- Streaming async results via
IAsyncEnumerablewith incremental UI updates - Fully cancellable — stop a search at any time
- Navigate from results — double-click to jump to the containing folder
- Find & Replace — plain text or regex with case sensitivity toggle
- Counter — configurable start, step, and zero-padding
- Prefix / Suffix — prepend or append text
- Case transforms — lowercase, UPPERCASE, TitleCase
- Extension change — bulk update file extensions
- Live preview — see old → new names before committing
A built-in text editor powered by AvalonEdit (F3):
- Syntax highlighting — auto-detected for 40+ file types (.cs, .js, .ts, .py, .json, .yaml, .md, .sql, and more)
- Line numbers, line/column indicator (Ln X, Col Y)
- Save (
Ctrl+S) with encoding preservation - Unsaved changes indicator
- Encoding detection and display
- 5 MB file size limit
- Side-by-side comparison (
Ctrl+D) of files from left and right panes - LCS-based diff algorithm with fallback for very large files
- Color-coded lines — added (green), removed (red), unchanged (gray)
- Line numbers on each side
- Synchronized scrolling
Folder Compare — compare entire directories between panes with status indicators: Same, Left Only, Right Only, Different.
Source Control Panel
- Git status with staged and changed files
- Stage / Unstage individual files or all
- Discard changes / Clean untracked files
- Commit, Push, Pull
- Side-by-side diff for staged and unstaged changes
- Pending changes badge in tab header
Git History Tab
- Commit log with hash, author, date, and subject
- Branch listing with current branch highlighted
- Filter by branch
- Per-file history
- Changed files list per commit with diff view
Git Branch Awareness
- Fast branch detection via
.git/HEAD - Rich terminal prompt:
PS C:\repo ⎇ main ↑2 *3> - Ahead/behind/dirty count indicators
Toggle with F8:
- Images — .png, .jpg, .jpeg, .bmp, .gif, .ico, .webp, .tif, .tiff (with dimensions display)
- Text / Code — 26+ extensions, first 4096 characters with monospaced font
- Hex dump — binary files shown as hex (first 256 bytes)
- Directory info — shows contained item count
- Metadata — file name, type, size, modified date
A built-in disk space analyzer with interactive treemap visualization (Ctrl+Shift+R). Think WinDirStat/SpaceSniffer — right inside your file explorer.
- Squarified treemap — every file and folder rendered as a proportionally-sized rectangle
- Color-coded by file type — images (teal), video (salmon), audio (pink), archives (gold), code (blue), documents (red), executables (yellow), data (green)
- Async scanning — live progress counter (files scanned + total bytes), never blocks the UI
- Drill-down navigation — click any folder to zoom in, Backspace to go back, with breadcrumb trail
- Hover tooltips — follow the mouse showing name, size, % of parent, and descendant counts
- Keyboard-first —
Backspacegoes back,F5rescans,Escapecloses - Full cancellation support — closing the window instantly cancels the scan
- Theme-aware — follows the app's active theme using dynamic resource brushes
| Theme | Description |
|---|---|
| Dark | VS Code-inspired dark theme |
| Light | VS Code-inspired light theme |
| Modern | iOS Files-inspired clean design with soft depth |
| System | Auto-detects Windows light/dark mode |
- 65+ dynamic resource brushes for consistent theming across every UI element
- DWM title bar integration — native dark/light title bar with caption color matching
- Customizable accent color
- Background update check on startup
- Dual URL sources (GitHub Pages + raw GitHub fallback)
- Version comparison with user prompt, release notes, and download link
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
F2 |
Rename |
F3 |
Quick Edit |
F5 |
Copy to other pane |
F6 |
Move to other pane |
F7 |
New folder |
F8 |
Toggle preview pane |
F9 |
Search |
Ctrl+T |
New tab |
Ctrl+W |
Close tab |
Ctrl+D |
File diff / Duplicate tab |
Ctrl+F |
Toggle quick filter |
Ctrl+G |
Git history |
Ctrl+Shift+R |
Space Radar (disk treemap) |
Ctrl+M |
Batch rename |
Ctrl+N |
New file |
Ctrl+R |
Refresh |
Ctrl+A |
Select all |
Ctrl+C / Ctrl+X / Ctrl+V |
Copy / Cut / Paste |
Ctrl+Shift+C |
Copy as path |
Ctrl+L / F4 |
Focus command input |
Ctrl+, |
Settings |
Ctrl+1 / 2 / 3 / 4 |
Focus tree / left pane / right pane / terminal |
Alt+Left / Alt+Right |
Back / Forward |
Alt+Enter |
Properties |
Backspace |
Navigate up |
Tab |
Switch between panes |
Del |
Delete |
Enter |
Open selected |
Escape |
Clear command / dismiss suggestions |
Open with Ctrl+,. All settings are persisted as JSON with versioned schema and live reload.
| Category | Options |
|---|---|
| General | Startup behavior, default view mode, click mode, show hidden/system files, natural sort, folder-first sorting |
| Appearance | Theme, accent color, compact density, animations, font family and size |
| Performance | Icon cache (16–1024 MB), preview cache (16–2048 MB), enumeration batch size (50–10000), max concurrent operations, background metadata throttle |
| File Operations | Default conflict resolution, copy queue, Recycle Bin, long path support |
| Terminal | Default shell, history limit (10–10000), fuzzy search, auto-suggestions, command templates |
| Keyboard | Custom keybindings, Far Manager-style mode |
| Advanced | Diagnostics logging, log level, crash reporting, experimental features |
Nexplorer follows Clean Architecture with MVVM:
src/
├── Nexplorer.App UI layer (WPF) — views, converters, controls
├── Nexplorer.Core Domain layer — file enumeration, models
tests/
└── Nexplorer.Tests Unit and integration tests
Key engineering decisions:
- Async streaming file enumeration via
IAsyncEnumerable - UI virtualization with
VirtualizingPanelin recycling mode CancellationTokenpropagation throughout all async operations- Native Windows shell icon extraction via
SHGetImageList - File system monitoring with
FileSystemWatcherand debounce - JSON-based settings with versioned schema and migration system
- Windows 10/11 (x64)
- .NET 10.0 Desktop Runtime
Download the latest MSI installer from the Releases page:
git clone https://github.com/Mehranh/Nexplorer.git
cd Nexplorer
dotnet build src/Nexplorer.App/Nexplorer.App.csproj
dotnet run --project src/Nexplorer.App/Nexplorer.App.csprojRun tests:
dotnet test tests/Nexplorer.Tests/Nexplorer.Tests.csproj© 2026 Nexplorer