This week, Windows 11 marked its second anniversary and the end of the initial release, version 21H2, which was infamous for its lack of polish and certain features. However, Windows 11 also introduced new things, such as a redesigned File Explorer, which later received tabs support and plenty of modernized UI elements and features.
The Windows 11 Moment 4 update Microsoft released to the general public in late September brought one of the biggest updates to File Explorer since the initial release. In February, we published an article detailing the top 10 features and changes Windows 11 users want Microsoft to add to File Explorer. Now, it is time to compare the requests with what Microsoft delivered.
It’s not looking good.
Ownership is an illusion!
To this day I don’t understand why so many people liked Windows 11’s File Explorer, maybe not “so many people”, but I remember seeing several positive reviews shortly after its launch, and I however think it was a setback (like several other aspects of the system, more obvious).
So much so that one of the things I did recently was, on my desktop that still runs Windows 10, I started testing different alternatives in parallel to get used to using another file manager when I have no choice but to migrate to Windows 11 in the future. (which I already use on my laptop, but it’s a device I use infrequently).
Today I still mostly use Explorer in Windows 10, as I find it more practical and productive for my workflow, so when I tried Windows 11, I was shocked at how bad, simplistic and unproductive its new file manager is (at least for me). ). Some basic options, which I used a lot, like “move/copy to” were removed (or I didn’t find out where they went)… among other things.
In the end, this helped me discover wonders like OneCommander and Altap Salamander, which, although I haven’t gotten used to it yet, or it isn’t similar to the workflow I used before, they have very interesting features. Others that I could mention are XYplorer and Q-Dir (the latter I have been using for a long time as I find it useful for special tasks).
I also like OneCommander. Its most important advantage being a native to the post-win8 environment, and not a leftover from early 2000s, still trying to run despite all the changes in windows and our monitors.
Xplorer2 is what I used during my win7 decade, but I guess I’ll be moving to OneCommander, mostly due to much better dark theme support.