Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

File Pilot: A file explorer built for speed with a modern, robust interface

filepilot.tech

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 231 posts

Re: File Pilot: A file explorer built for speed with a modern, robust interface

#31

Post by [deleted] »

netsharc wrote: post #21
jacobgkau wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The top of the homepage says File Pilot was made from scratch (so I'd expect inherently less technical debt than something that's been around since the 90's). Comparing its screenshots to Directory Opus, it looks less cluttered, or at least slightly different. The interface looks like it adheres to the Windows 11 design style a little more, versus Directory Opus's screenshots looking like Windows 8-10. If I used Wind…

I prefer to use Win10 and probably move to Linux after that, so the interface doesn't match the rest of my OS. It's incredibly fast though. But speaking of technical debts, I couldn't open a UNC path ( \\nas\share\ ). Opening a network share mounted to a drive letter worked fine though.

[deleted]

Re: File Pilot: A file explorer built for speed with a modern, robust interface

#32

Post by [deleted] »

netsharc wrote: post #21
jacobgkau wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The top of the homepage says File Pilot was made from scratch (so I'd expect inherently less technical debt than something that's been around since the 90's). Comparing its screenshots to Directory Opus, it looks less cluttered, or at least slightly different. The interface looks like it adheres to the Windows 11 design style a little more, versus Directory Opus's screenshots looking like Windows 8-10. If I used Wind…

I prefer to use Win10 and probably move to Linux after that, so the interface doesn't match the rest of my OS. It's incredibly fast though. But speaking of technical debts, I couldn't open a UNC path ( \\nas\share\ ). Opening a network share mounted to a drive letter worked fine though.

[deleted]

Re: File Pilot: A file explorer built for speed with a modern, robust interface

#35

Post by Marsymars »

webdevver wrote: post #4

being able to hold down Ctrl-T, and just have it open tabs at the speed of the typematic rate is such a joy. it is really honestly disgusting (and I don't use that word lightly) how long it takes for explorer.exe to open a tab, open a context menu, or (god forbid!) open a window. genuine breath of fresh air to have a file explorer that isn't hot garbage.

> being able to hold down Ctrl-T, and just have it open tabs at the speed of the typematic rate is such a joy.

The Opera web browser used to do this before the switch to Chromium. I don’t know that any modern browser has this performance capability.

Re: File Pilot: A file explorer built for speed with a modern, robust interface

#36

Post by user_7832 »

I’m not sure if this is really the right place to ask, but it’s close enough so I’ll ask anyway - why are there no apparent file explorers that allow simultaneous “multi depth” viewing? For example, if Folder A contains only Subfolders B and C which are both empty, why are there no explorers that show eg 2 boxes called ‘B’ and ‘C’ inside A’s icon/view? If a directly has dozens of empty folders, and 2 subfolders have 1 file each, and another subfolder has 20 files and takes 99% of space, why is there no intuitive way to quickly find the large folder?

The closest is probably how windows shows previews on desktop but that is only one level deep, if there are empty subfolders it doesn’t help.

Id imagine someone at Plan9 or WebOS or BeOS or some archaic software/OS developer had surely thought of this and made something. Yet all “top” windows file explorers are completely “flat” and don’t show any depth.

Re: File Pilot: A file explorer built for speed with a modern, robust interface

#37

Post by kstrauser »

CharlesW wrote: post #16
willaaam wrote: post #11

Please, I beg you dear developer, replace my stupid MacOS finder with your superpowers!

There are a few good Finder alternatives for macOS, including Path Finder, ForkLift, Commander One, and Double Commander (FOSS).

I ended up with ForkLift after much trial and error. Commander One was nice. Double Commander is also great but not "native" on Mac. Path Finder is super powerful but has a rep for being overcomplicated and also crashy, but I can't personally vouch because it wasn't quite what I was looking for anyway.

Re: File Pilot: A file explorer built for speed with a modern, robust interface

#38

Post by quyleanh »

nipperkinfeet wrote: post #28

Wow, after so many useless bloated Electron based applications over the years, this is like a breath of fresh air. This is so fast, lightweight, portable, and uses only 17 MB of memory with XL icons of over 10k photos. Very impressive. If only more developers would quit their laziness and make such software again.

Totally agree! Let's make a real joy such like this one. I feel a great sense of satisfaction and excitement watching the File Pilot development process.

Re: File Pilot: A file explorer built for speed with a modern, robust interface

#39

Post by speckx »

II2II wrote: post #19
jacobgkau wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The top of the homepage says File Pilot was made from scratch (so I'd expect inherently less technical debt than something that's been around since the 90's). Comparing its screenshots to Directory Opus, it looks less cluttered, or at least slightly different. The interface looks like it adheres to the Windows 11 design style a little more, versus Directory Opus's screenshots looking like Windows 8-10. If I used Wind…

On the other hand, 35 years of cruft also represents 35 years of accumulated knowledge about what people want from a file manager. So one should not dismiss Directory Opus based upon a few screenshots. Fresh blood is certainly a good thing though. I am just arguing that we should not dismiss something based upon its age or cosmetics. (Directory Opus is one of the few things that I miss while using Linux.)

In addition to Directory Opus, I also miss https://www.xyplorer.com/ on Windows since I’m on Linux.

Re: File Pilot: A file explorer built for speed with a modern, robust interface

#40

Post by kstrauser »

linsomniac wrote: post #25
willaaam wrote: post #11

Please, I beg you dear developer, replace my stupid MacOS finder with your superpowers!

What is the deal with MacOS file dialogs? A couple days ago I was trying to open a project in Cursor, and I click on "home" and my name, and then it has the directories grouped by year created. So I type in the search box, but it's now searching some other context, like the whole system or something? I don't even have tons of files/directories in my home directory "ls | wc -l" gives 36. It's like they designed it whi…

If you start searching, I think it defaults to scope "This Mac". That's probably right for most cases. If you want to open a Word doc named Fnord, you'd kind of hope Finder would... find it... wherever it was. But you can also click next to "This Mac" to switch it the context of the directory you're in.

Also, cmd-shift-G (the Finder shortcut for "Go to Folder...") will let you start typing a path.

Post reply on HN