30 Best File Managers for Linux Systems

Aaron Kili 2016-06-14 Channel: Top Tools Linux

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File management is so important on a computer that users always want to have a simple and easy-to-use file manager or file browser. But sometimes having a feature-rich and highly configurable file manager for performing both simple tasks such as searching, copying, moving, creating, and deleting files, and complex operations such as remote access of files and SSH connections is very vital.

Best Linux File Managers

Whether you prefer a lightweight file manager with fewer features or a heavy file manager with multiple features and functionalities, it all depends on how you operate your system.

Below are a list of some of the best Gui file managers, Console file managers, and browsers that you can find on different Linux distributions and can be installed using the default system package management tool called apt, yum, or dnf as shown.

# apt install filemanager-name  [On Debian/Ubuntu/Mint]
# yum install filemanager-name  [On CentOS/RHEL]
# dnf install filemanager-name  [On Fedora]

1. Konqueror File Manager

Konqueror is a powerful and great file manager for KDE desktop, it offers simple file management functionalities such as copying, moving, searching, and deleting file plus some advanced features and functionalities such as access to archives, browse and rip audio CDs, support for access to FTP and SFTP servers, smb(Windows) shares.

Konqueror File Manager

It has the following major features:

Powered by KHTML rendering engine
Uses a universal file viewer
Has highly customizable applications

Visit Homepage: https://konqueror.org/

2. Nautilus File Manager

Formerly known as Nautilus, it is a simple and default file manager on the GNOME desktop, it offers a user easy navigation and management of files on a Linux system.

Nautilus File Manager

GNOME Files is widely supported on several desktop environments on Linux, therefore making it one of the best and also most popular.

It has got some enticing features and these include:

Simple to use menus
Offers file safety
Easy to understand at a glance
Enables access to both local and remote files

Visit Homepage: https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Nautilus/

3. Dolphin File Manager

Dolphin is a free, open-source, lightweight file manager developed as part of the KDE applications package. Designed for simplicity, flexibility, and full customization, it allows users to browse, locate, open, copy, and move files around a Linux system with a lot of ease.

Dolphin File Manager for Linux

It is the default file manager on KDE desktops from KDE 4 onwards but users of KDE 3 can also install and use it. It replaced Konqueror as the KDE default file manager with the following features:

File previews
Breadcrumb navigation bar
Three view modes(icons, compact, and details)
Split views for easily moving files
Support for shortcuts
Undo/redo functionalities
Tabbed navigation
File sorting and grouping by name, size, types, and many other attributes

Visit Homepage: https://www.kde.org/applications/system/dolphin/

4. GNU Midnight Commander

It is free software, full-screen, text mode, a visual file manager that lets a user search, copy, move and also delete files and even whole directory tree.

Midnight Commander – Commandline File Manager

It is feature-rich with some of these amazing features especially for those who love to operate on the terminal:

Enables running commands in a subshell
Has an internal viewer and editor
Based on versatile text interfaces such as Ncurses or S-Lang, therefore, making it work on a regular console, in an X Window Term or over SSH

Visit Homepage: https://www.midnight-commander.org/
Installation Instructions: https://www.tecmint.com/midnight-commander-a-console-based-file-manager-for-linux/

5. Krusader File Manager

It is also an advanced twin-panel file manager that works similar to GNU Midnight Commander, but in a GUI setup and has some great features including:

Support for mounted filesystem
Advanced search module
Extensive archive handling and support for multiple archive formats
Support for FTP
Directory synchronization
File content comparisons
User friendly and highly customizable

Krusader File Manager for Linux

Visit Homepage: https://www.kde.org/applications/utilities/krusader/

6. PCManFM File Manager

PCManFM meant to be a replacement for the popular Nautilus, Konqueror, and Thunar file managers, PCManFM is the standard and feature-rich file manager on LXDE desktop and has the following features:

Full support for GVFS with access to remote filesystems
Four view modes (icon, compact, detail, and also thumbnail)
Support for desktop management
Shows thumbnail for pictures
Bookmarks functionality
Support for tabbed windows
Drag and drop support
User-friendly GTK+2 interface
Default file association support plus many more, as I had mentioned, it is feature-rich.

PCMANFM File Manager for Linux

Visit Homepage: http://wiki.lxde.org/en/PCManFM

7. XFE File Manager

It is a commander sort of file manager for X Windows, based on X Win Commander whose development has been discontinued for one reason or the other.

XFE File Manager for Linux

The main aim of developing it was to offer a lightweight file manager for Unix-like operating systems, and it works well for those of you who enjoy working mostly on the terminal.

XFE is also featured rich but we shall not look at all of them here and some of them include:

Very fast GUI
Small memory footprints
Four file manager modes; one panel, directory tree and one panel, two panels and directory tree, and finally two panels
UTF-8 support
Search files and directories
Disk usage command
Status lines
Root mode with authentication with utilities such as sudo and su
Bookmarks support
Toolbar support
Autosave registry functionality and many more

Visit Homepage: http://roland65.free.fr/xfe/

8. Nemo File Manager

Nemo is the default file manager on Cinnamon desktop, Linux Mint users must be familiar with it, it is a fork of the more popular GNOME Files.

Nemo File Manager for Linux

It is also lightweight and has some great features which include:

Uses GVFS and GIO
Open in terminal support
Open as root support
Proper GTK bookmarks management
Full navigation options such as the back, forward, up, refresh
Supports several configuration options and many more

Visit Homepage: https://github.com/linuxmint/nemo

9. Thunar File Manager

Thunar is a modern, lightweight file manager for Xfce desktop, designed to be fast, responsive, and easy to use. One thing you will like about it is its clean and intuitive interface with few and important user options available.

Thunar File Manager for Linux

It has some great features which include:

Highly pluggable
Hidden settings
Rename several files at once
Custom commands associated with common extensions
Customizable send to menu plus many more

Visit Homepage: http://docs.xfce.org/xfce/thunar/

10. SpaceFM File Manager

SpaceFM is a great, multi-panel tabbed file manager for Linux desktops. Developed to provide a stable, efficient, and highly customizable file manager, some of its features include in-built VFS, HAL-based device manager, customizable menu system, and bash integration.

Spacefm File Manager

Visit Homepage: http://ignorantguru.github.io/spacefm/

11. Caja – File Manager

Caja is the default file manager for the mate desktop and it enables you to explore directories, preview files and start programs connected with them. It is also capable of handling the icons on the mate desktop environment and works on local and remote filesystems.

Caja File Manager

Visit Homepage: https://github.com/mate-desktop/caja

12. Ranger Console File Manager

Ranger is an open-source terminal file manager with VI key bindings, which provides a minimalistic and better user-friendly interface with a view on the directory hierarchy. It comes with a 「rifle」, a file starter that is best at auto-detecting which program to use for what file format.

Ranger – Linux Console File Manager

Visit Homepage: http://ranger.nongnu.org/

13. Command Line File Manager

It may not be an actual file manager of sorts but what is file management on a Linux system, if we fail to talk about the command line. Very powerful and flexible especially when you understand the Linux filesystem and offers basic and advanced file management functionalities such as searching, copying, moving, creating, and deleting files and also supports FTP, SFTP, SMB server access, SHH connections plus many more.

Linux Commandline File Manager 14. Deepin File Manager

Deepin File Manager is a powerful, classic, innovative, and easy-to-use file manager designed and built by the developers of the Deepin operating system. Like most open source file managers, deepin file manager simplifies user operation and comes with many distinctive features such as an easy-access navigation bar and diversified view and sorting.

Deepin File Manager 15. Polo File Manager

Polo is a modern, lightweight and advanced file manager for Linux with support for multiple panes and tabs. It also features a device manager, archive support; PDF, ISO, and image actions; supports checksums and hashing, and video downloads. Importantly, it supports cloud storage; running and managing KVM images, and so much more.

Polo File Manager 16. cfiles – Terminal File Manager

cfiles is a command-line file manager that comes with vim like keybindings, written in C language using the ncurses library. It aims to offer an interface like a ranger while being lightweight, fast, and minimal.

cfiles – Terminal File Manager 17. Double Commander

Double Commander is a free cross-platform open-source file manager with two panels side by side, inspired by Total Commander, and features some new ideas. It features an internal text editor with syntax highlighting, a built-in file viewer to view files of in hex, binary, or text format, multi-rename tool.

In addition, it handles archives as if they were sub-directories allowing you to easily copy files to and from them. It also supports an extended search function with full-text search in any files and so many other exciting features.

Double Commander 18. Emacs File Manager

Emacs is a well-known, extensible text editor used mainly on Unix-based systems such as Linux, by programmers, scientists, engineers, students, and system administrators.

Unlike most text editors in Linux, an emacs is an excellent tool for file management. You can use it to list files, copy/delete, rename, move files, create/delete a directory, in the same way, you do in the Linux shell.

Emacs File Manager 19. Pantheon Files

Pantheon Files is a simple, powerful, stylish, and minimal file manager. It is the default file manager on Elementary OS. Pantheon Files is minimal and very easy to use. It is a good file manager for Linux newbies as it offers all useful commands in plain sight – on the toolbar or the sidebar.

Pantheon Files 20. Vifm File Manager

Vifm is a cross-platform, fully-featured file manager with a curses interface, which offers a Vi/m-like environment for managing objects within file systems. It borrows a number of useful ideas from Mutt – a text-based email client with powerful features.

For vi users, Vifm gives you complete keyboard control over your files without putting effort to learn a new set of commands. Its feature set includes vim-like user mappings, vim-like command-line mode with ranges and abbreviations, vim-like marks and registers, directory tree comparison, operation undoing/redoing/backgrounding, FUSE file systems support, and much more.

Vifm Commandline File Manager 21. Worker File Manager

Worker is another lightweight, simple, easy-to-use, and feature-rich, two-pane file manager for the X Window System on Unix-like systems. It is intended to make managing files easy with full keyboard control.

It shows directories and files in two independent panels, and supports many advanced file manipulation features that allow you to find files and directories by using the history of accessed directories; supports live filtering, and access to commands by using the keyboard.

Worker File Manager 22. nnn – Terminal File Manager

nnn is a minimal, blazing-fast, and feature-packed terminal file browser. It runs on Linux, macOS, Raspberry Pi, BSD, Cygwin, Linux subsystem for Windows as well as Termux. It is intended to bridge the gap between the terminal and the desktop environment.

It comes with some powerful features, such as an application launcher, different modes (such as unique 「navigate-as-you-type」 mode with auto-select and disk usage analyzer mode), Unicode support, and much more. It also supports various scripts.

nnn – Terminal File Manager 23. WCM Commander

WCM Commander is a cross-platform, file manager with a very fast user interface, for Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, and OS X. It features mimic look and feel built-in terminal and text editor with syntax highlighting built-in text viewer, and virtual file system (smb, FTP, sftp).

WCM Commander 24. 4Pane File Manager

4Pane is a simple, fast, easy-to-use, and multi-pane file manager for Linux systems. It focuses so much on speed rather than visual effects. It features multiple undo and redo of most operations (including deletions), and supports archive management. 4Pane comes with a terminal emulator and a number of user-defined tools.

It supports multiple renaming/duplication of files, displays a progress bar in the status bar when large files are being moved or pasted, and much more.

4Pane File Manager 25. lf – Terminal File Manager

lf is a simple, lightweight, and cross-platform terminal file manager inspired by a ranger with a number of missing and extra features. It has a server/client architecture to share file selection between multiple instances.

lf can be configured with shell commands and supports customizable keybindings. In addition, If tries to automatically adapt its colors to the environment and supports preview filtering for source highlight, archives, pdfs/images as text, and more.

lf Terminal File Manager 26. jFileProcessor

jFileProcessor is a lightweight file and list manager with features for common file operations (copy, cut, paste, delete, create a new folder, etc.), searching files by name, dates, or sizes. It also supports bookmarks.

jFileProcessor File Manager 27. qtfm File Manager

qtfm is a simple and lightweight file manager using Qt, with a customizable interface. It comes with features such as desktop (theme/applications/mime) integration, a powerful custom command system, customizable key bindings, support for drag and drops functionality, tabs, and udisks support.

Qtfm File Manager 28. PCManFM-qt

PCManFM-qt file manager is the Qt port of PCManFM. It also doubles as an icon manager. In LXQt sessions, it’s in addition used to handle the desktop.

PCManFM-Qt File Manager 29. fman

fman is a dual-pane file manager for Linux, Windows, and macOS. You can use it to explore directories, copy or move files, mount external devices, perform file-related tasks much more efficiently than other file managers.

fman file manager 30. Liri Files

Liri files is a simple and easy-to-use tool to access and organize files. It is the default file manager for Liri operating system.

Liri Files

This list must have left many of you wondering why I have not mentioned some of your favorite file managers here but the list here is endless believe me if we are to look at all the usable and good file managers available in Linux but the choice depends on you as an individual.

You can share with us any file managers you are using out there, which you think deserved to be mentioned here through the comment section below.