Multi Commander is a free file manager for Windows that replaces Windows Explorer with a tabbed, dual-panel workspace. It is aimed at people who move, rename, compare and inspect many files. It offers both a keyboard-driven setup in the Norton Commander tradition and an Explorer-style mode for mouse users. It is available as an installer and as a portable build that keeps its settings in its own folder. It is also available as a Microsoft Store edition (Multi Commander SE) that cannot modify the Windows system folder.
Two panels with tabs
The window shows two file panels side by side, each with its own tabs. This puts the source in one panel and the destination in the other. The path bar above each panel doubles as a command line. A button panel holds up to 96 commands, since each of its 32 buttons reacts differently to the left, right and middle mouse buttons.
Multi Commander remembers selections when you leave a folder and return. You can select items with wildcard patterns, save a selection to a file and reload it. A View Filter trims a crowded folder to what you need. Quick Search jumps to matching names as you type, and folder sizes can be shown in the size column.
Panel comparison checks the active folder against the opposite one and selects duplicates, items missing from the other side, or newer copies of same-named files. An advanced compare can also match by date, size and file content, with settings saved as profiles.
Copy and move jobs
Copies and moves run in the background, and a new copy can wait in a queue behind one already running. Include and exclude filters let a job skip items such as every .svn subfolder. When reading fails, Multi Commander can keep partially copied files, useful with a failing USB stick or damaged archive. It can skip errors and list them in a report at the end.
Copy plug-ins change what happens to files on the way. AutoSort places them into A–Z folders at the target. Auto-unpack extracts zip or rar archives during the copy, and ContentCopy copies only the contents of selected folders. Filters, plug-ins and options can be saved as a preset that loads automatically for a particular path.
Archives, servers and the Registry
Plug-ins let Multi Commander browse non-disk locations like ordinary folders. Zip, 7-Zip, RAR, Tar, gz and bz2 archives open in the panels. You can also create archives in Zip, 7-Zip and the Tar formats, while RAR is read-only. Multi Commander reaches remote servers over FTP with SSL/TLS and over SFTP or SCP. It also accesses network shares and phones or tablets connected as Windows Portable Devices.
The Windows Registry opens as a folder tree too. There, you can copy keys between locations, something RegEdit does not offer, and rename keys and values.
Finding files
Search runs in the background. It matches names with wildcards, regular expressions or plain text, or searches by content, attributes, size and date, including inside archives. Folders can be excluded and the depth limited. Results appear in virtual folders named RES1: to RES9:, where copy, rename, delete and edit work directly. You can search a large result set again from its cache.
Viewer and batch renaming
The built-in viewer opens files of several gigabytes with little memory use. It displays them as ASCII, UTF-8, Unicode, binary or hex, with syntax coloring and line numbers. It reloads a file when it changes, which suits live logs. For renaming, the MultiRename tool applies rule-based rename operations to many files at once and can undo them.
Pictures and media files
Picture tools convert images between formats, rotate and flip them (losslessly for JPEG), and extract, remove or edit EXIF data such as capture date. Photos with GPS data can be opened on Google Maps. Property plug-ins add panel columns for EXIF fields, image dimensions, movie information from IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes, and audio tags.
Permissions and locked files
The File Security menu takes ownership of a file or folder, adds permissions for users or groups, or removes all permissions. When another program blocks deleting or renaming a file, Find Open Files shows the responsible process. A File Verifier creates and checks MD5 and SFV checksum files to find damaged files.
Scripts and custom commands
Multi Commander has its own scripting language, MultiScript. User-defined commands are short script calls. You can attach them to menus, hotkeys or buttons, for example to jump to a music folder or start a preset search. Command-line aliases shorten longer operations. You can remap all hotkeys. A developer SDK supports building new file system, copy and column plug-ins or extensions.
