HN Explorer

Ask HN: Anyone else frustrated with current macOS file manager solutions?

8 points by brunorsini ↗ HN
Path Finder served me well for a few years... But it has gotten noticeable worse with recent updates — buggy, really slow to load image thumbnails, etc.

Forklift seems to be a promising alternative... But it also crashes way too often. Tried Commander One some years ago and also wasn't impressed.

By now I seriously miss Windows Explorer...

Has anyone had better luck than me finding a decent solution for the Mac?

10 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 26.3 ms ] thread
Lorenz-Kraft
Same here. Already tried terminal based tools (Midnight Commander etc.), but i just got different problems with these tools (like not updating listings).

I finally turned off "Preview Icons" in the normal Finder that gave a relativ performance gain displaying larger file lists and made the finder kind of useable again.

Just a few days ago I saw the finder on a hdd based installation (not ssd) and it took "ages" (like some seconds) to display the relatively empty applications folder.

I wonder if all new software is just approved via state of the art hardware and older Macs are left behind ...

Ultramanoid
I believe KDE's Dolphin is supposed to be able to run in Mac OS ? ( Haven't tried myself yet. )

File management is definitely something Apple has never done well. And they absolutely kept it out of iOS, for good measure. Sigh.

Path Finder user myself since it came out years ago, the Finder for me is just unusable.

Edit : Sorry, but after thirty years using it, I simply refuse to spell it macOS or whatever the cool kids in their marketing department want to call it next year.

brunorsini
Tried to install Dolphin on High Sierra (with kde-mac/homebrew) but stumbled upon some weird errors : /

Would love tips to get it to work if anyone has figured it out.

Hackbraten
I use multiple Finder windows and one of those window auto-move/resize tools which take Alt-1 for left, Alt-2 for right, and so on.

This approach lets me arrange non-Finder windows, too, e. g. Terminal sessions, browser windows, or text documents.

brunorsini
It's so frustrating that Finder doesn't offer a dual pane mode. I find having a bunch of windows floating around quite annoying, even though I also use global resizing shortcuts.
Hackbraten
Agree, that part is indeed super annoying. I’m happy I’ve been able to convince myself that I can live with it.
__d
fman (https://fman.io) is a cross-platform GUI file manager.

It's from the Norton Commander school of file management.

It's under active development, and the author seems pretty responsive. It's not gratis, but not expensive either.

brunorsini
Sounds promising, will definitely check it out. Thanks!
luka-birsa
You can try: https://marta.yanex.org/ - this one keeps the original NC spirit strong. i've used it a while but reverted back to Finder + command line folder manipulation.