Efficient work with (any) file system
Motivation
Whether you are a simple computer user or a veteran programmer, you can not avoid copying, renaming, zipping, and unzipping files and folders. In many cases, you will also want to find duplicates or some text inside files.
There are plenty of ways to achieve these goals and each experienced computer user will recommend different ways to do this.
In this article, I will review my preferred freeware tool to handle all file system tasks. I’ll demonstrate its ease of use, its simplicity in setting up complicated tasks, and its superiority to OS built-in tools.
Disclaimer
- If you are strongly used to bash and aren’t open to alternative ways of doing things, you can quit reading right now :)
- Neither I am the developer nor am I getting paid for this review. I just want to share my positive experience from at least 15 years of this tool’s usage at home & work, on Windows and Linux.
- Don’t be scared of the black theme: it can be configured to any color you like
Double Commander
Yes, this is the ultimate (in my opinion) tool to handle files and folders operations in any OS.
Why?
- It simply saves time. A lot of time
- It’s highly customizable
- It is free and supports Windows, Linux, and Mac
- Your configuration is saved in an XML file and you get the same configuration at home/work, Windows/Linux
On its homepage, you will find its basic description, a (very) partial list of its abilities, and download links.
My favorite features overview and examples
It’s all about keyboard and hotkeys
Two panels navigation
- Like its predecessors, it features two panels between which you can copy and move items. Switch between panels with the Tab key
- In each panel, you can open multiple tabs and switch between them with CTRL-tab
- You can also quickly “throw” your location from the current panel to the second one with CTRL+left/right arrow
- The basic view gives you a lot of info: total occupied space in the current drive, folders’ and files’ sizes and dates, color code by files’ types, etc.
- Navigation is made easy with favorite folders and history: with CTRL+d you get quick access to your favorite and most common folders, which you can organize as you wish
- Marking items (either manually or by pattern/mask) lets you copy or move them from one panel to another
Search
“Quick and powerful” ©Hebrews 4:12
By pressing ALT+F7 you get to the (almost) all-mighty search box of Double Commander
- Find files or folders by size, name pattern, date range, OS attributes, etc.
- Locate (and replace, if needed) text inside files. Search for files that do not contain the text
- Find duplicate files! Duplicates by name, size, hash, or content
- Perform any operation on all the found files by feeding the search results into a list box. You get the found files in one of the panels and you can treat them as if they were in the same folder, no matter where they were originally located
Multi-rename tool
Combos — the key to winning a match
- The Multi-Rename tool allows you to… rename multiple files at once
- Combine with the feed to Listbox search option and you get a powerful combo!
- Add a counter, date, or any other text anywhere in the files’ names
- Find and replace any character or pattern with anything
- Use regex to find patterns
- In the example above I have:
- added a counter before files’ names (starting from 2, with the interval of 5 and field width of 3)
- added month-date field after the extension
- replace ‘o’ letter by ‘^-^’ chars
Background operations
Multitasking like a champ
Have you ever been forced to wait until a large file is copied, or a huge archive is unzipped? “No!” to this time-wasting!
Copy, move or compression tasks can be put into a queue and run in the background, while you continue using Double Commander.
Just press F2 instead of Enter and the operation will be running in the background.
You can always pop up and view the queue of currently running tasks.
Built-in tools
Take it all with no charge
Double Commander has plenty of built-in modules right out of the box:
- Built-in text viewer and editor
- Checksum calculation and verification
- Compression and extraction plug-ins like Zip, 7z, Rar, and more
- Folders and files comparison
- Changing file or folder attributes, like creation, modification, and access dates
- FTP remote connection — get a remote computer file system in one of your panels
And many more
An outstanding configurability
The action of modifying something to suit a particular individual or task
© Oxford dictionary
It’s possible to configure and customize almost everything! Even the location of the configuration file :)
- Set files’ coloring by their type or category
- Set size indication in GB, MB, KB, bits, or dynamically
- Set custom columns in panel view
Etc, etc, etc. The list is so large that there’s no point to continue here. There are enough customization options to make any copy of Double Commander different between all its users.
Share the configuration file between your devices and OSs and get the same look and feel anywhere
Conclusion
I shall spare your time and stop here — if you weren’t convinced to try till now.
The examples shown above demonstrate well how working with Double Commander regularly can save a lot of mouse clicks, bash commands typing, and, finally, your precious time.
I hope you enjoyed my passionate review and are ready to give it a try.
If you do so, be ready for a short learning curve — after you memorize the few very basic hotkeys, you’ll feel much more confident and happy.
Good luck and have a good time!
