Finally, a file manager from 2026!
The standard two-pane file manager experience we love
- plus a drive index for instant search and folder sizes
- plus a bunch of (optional!) AI features to organize your files.
Built in Rust, free for personal use.
Source-available · Free for personal use · $59 once for work
Built by a dev who’s used two-pane file managers like Total Commander for 35 years, and couldn’t find a good one on Mac.
File operations
Rock solid file ops
Accurate progress display, ETAs, pause/resume/cancel.
Cmdr logs every operation,
so you can roll them back, even days later.
See How Cmdr keeps your files safe for details.
File operations you can trust
When moving big folders around, it’s essential to understand the progress of your transfer, and it feels very nice to be able to pause/resume it. You can also cancel (interrupt) or even roll back the entire action before it’s done.
Later, you can see your past actions in an operations log, and roll back any action, even days later.
Queue them up
When you have many files/folders to move around, you can start one operation, send it to the background, and keep browsing your files. Then start another transfer, and another, etc. Cmdr keeps track of your queued transfers, and runs them one after the other. You can pause/resume, and reorder queue items.
Connections
Handles all sorts of volumes
NAS (SMB), phones and cameras, SFTP/NFS servers, S3 buckets, WebDAV, restic backups, git repos, and archives work just like any folder on your Mac.
See the whole list and their details.
Your NAS, NFS shares, and S3 buckets
Add an SMB server in a few seconds and browse it way faster than Finder does. NFS shares and S3 buckets open the same way, and Cmdr tells you what an S3 upload will cost before you copy.
Git repos, backups, and phones
Browse a repo’s commits as folders, unlock a restic backup and copy files out of any snapshot, or open your Android phone over USB.
- Phones and cameras Android over MTP and ADB, up to 4x faster than Android File Transfer. Kindles and cameras, too.
- Network drives Cmdr has its own SMB client, 4–200x faster than what macOS uses, and NFS needs no system mount.
- Servers and cloud SFTP, WebDAV, and S3-compatible buckets, with cost estimates for various S3-compatible providers.
- Git Browse history, branches, and stashes as folders. Copy out files from your branch from last year.
- Backups Open a restic backup and copy files out of your snapshot.
- Archives Open zip, tar, and 7z files like folders. Copy/edit files in your existing zips.
Multi-rename
Bulk rename files
Use a pattern, counters, search & replace, with a live preview. Changed your mind? You can undo it.
If you like AI, you can also ask the (optional!) agent to “add an ISO date and lowercase all file names”.
Viewer
Opens all file types, fast
The built-in viewer opens text files, images, PDFs, and more, in media, text, binary, and hex views, and
lets you search them, too.
It opens a 10 GB file in a second.
Optional!
AI features
Set up an LLM in Cmdr to search in plain language. Type “my tax report from last year”, and the agent turns it into filters.
- Off by default. A lot of people just want a nice two-pane file manager. With AI off (default), Cmdr is only that, no AI fluff.
- But it’s quite cool! “Help me clean up my Downloads folder” is a classic. But also “find my mule’s medical papers” or even “find photos of penguins looking into the camera”, or “summarize this PDF for me”. It’s AI features that are actually useful.
- Can stay 100% on your Mac. A small local model downloads and starts within Cmdr if you want. Or bring your own OpenAI, Claude, or Gemini key: Claude Opus is certainly a few leagues smarter than the 3B-param model Cmdr runs locally.
Nice and polished
Follows your preferences
Cmdr respects your Mac’s look (color, theme, etc.) and accessibility (motion, zoom, contrast, etc.) settings.
It lets you use VoiceOver, works with keyboard only, mouse only, and has WCAG AA+ contrast levels everywhere.
Translated to 14 languages. Switch between them without restarting.
Testimonials
These are real words from real people, no marketing crap.
Believe me, I’ve tried every Total Commander alternative on macOS, and none of them clicked. Cmdr won me over because Cmd + arrow keys opens the current folder in the other pane. That’s my entry test, and lots of apps already fail it. Not Cmdr! :-)
Sven Kopetzki
Germany
I’ve been waiting for this file commander my whole life, even though I’m not young anymore. This program is already running circles around the competition currently available.
Robert Benedict
Oh what a wonderful program you are developing here! … I’m currently cleaning up my old macbook, moving stuff to a new one, use clumsy errorprone Finder in combo with rsync terminal. Cmdr is the lifesaver now!
An early user
Austria
Get Cmdr now!
Free for personal use. No signup, no account needed.
Cmdr is in open beta: solid for daily use, and your feedback shapes what’s next. See the feature status.
or install with Homebrew
brew install --cask vdavid/tap/cmdr Free for personal use · $59 once for work
Source-available · BSL 1.1 license · SHA-256 checksums
Needs macOS 12 or newer. macOS 10.15 and 11 run on a best-effort basis: everything works, but a few colors and layout details can look off.