A modern, keyboard-first, dual-pane file manager in the spirit of Total Commander — built with .NET MAUI for Windows (WinUI), macOS (native AppKit via maui-labs, not Catalyst) and Linux (GTK4 via maui-labs), and dressed in Shiny Controls.
shinysoftware.github.io/Commander · Download
 Folder tabs - lock, rename, colour and give each tab an icon |
 Breadcrumbs - every crumb drops down the folders inside it |
 Archives as folders - zip, 7z and tar, changed in place |
 Quick view - the other panel previews the file under the cursor |
 Dark mode - follows the system, or pick one in Settings |
 Thumbnails per panel |
 Lister (F3) - text, hex, images and rendered Markdown |
 Find files (Alt+F7) |
 Multi-rename with a live preview |
 Settings |
 Pane toolbar - choose the buttons beside each path |
Regenerate with tests/ShinyCommander.UITests/run.sh --readme-screenshots. The product website in
website/ uses the same pictures.
| Dual panels | side by side or stacked top/bottom (Primary+Shift+L), drive chips with a free-space meter, sortable columns, TC-style cursor + red marks, status line, auto-refresh (FileSystemWatcher), everything restored on the next launch |
| Folder tabs | tabs sit on top of each panel like folder tabs, with the marked count as a badge. Right-click a tab to lock it (it stays on its folder - going anywhere else opens a new tab - and can't close until unlocked), rename it, give it a colour and an icon. Home, Desktop, Documents, Downloads and cloud folders start as locked tabs. Tabs can be turned off in Settings |
| Breadcrumbs | the path is a breadcrumb trail: click a crumb to go there, click its › to drop down the folders inside it, or click the pencil to type a path |
| Views | details or thumbnails per panel (Primary+Shift+F1 / Primary+F2), column chooser incl. date created (Primary+Shift+K), an optional folder tree in each panel that follows the panel's folder and resizes with a drag (Primary+F8), quick view - the other panel previews the file under the cursor (Ctrl+Q) |
| Keyboard | the full TC keymap (F2–F8, Insert/Space/Shift-arrows marking, Tab, Backspace, Alt+F7, Ctrl+B/R/H/T/W/U/D…) via Shiny's cross-platform keyboard-shortcut engine; Primary = ⌘ on Mac, Ctrl elsewhere. F1 shows a reference generated from the live shortcut registry |
| Command line | typing goes to the command line; cd is handled internally, everything else runs through the system shell with output streamed into a console pane |
| Archives | Enter opens an archive like a folder. zip (+ jar/nupkg/docx/apk/…), 7z, tar, tar.gz, tar.bz2 and tar.zst work like folders: copy and move in and out (archive to archive too), delete, rename, move within, new folder, new file, multi-rename, and edit a file (F4) to save it back into the archive. rar, tar.xz and lone .gz/.bz2/.xz are read-only. Tar changes keep links, permissions and macOS metadata; 7z is written by a built-in writer |
| Pack & unpack | Pack (Alt+F5) files or whole folders - everything under them - into a new or existing zip, 7z, tar, tar.gz, tar.bz2 or tar.zst; Unpack (Alt+F9) any supported archive, one folder per archive if you like |
| Operations | copy/move/delete with byte progress, conflict resolution (overwrite / all / older / skip / keep both), move-by-rename fast path, trash/recycle bin (⌘⌫ on a Mac, like Finder) |
| Background jobs (Primary+J) | copy, move, delete, pack and unpack run in the background while you keep working: live progress per job, Stop, Go To (opens where the result went, cursor on it), Clear Completed. Closing or quitting while a job runs asks first |
| Lister (F3) | text, hex, images, rendered Markdown — also for files inside archives; N/P walks the folder |
| Editor (F4) | built-in editor (Markdown files get Shiny's MarkdownEditor with live preview) or your external editor - inside an archive too, saving back into it |
| Find files | wildcard masks with TC syntax (*.cs;*.xaml | bin/ obj/), content search, size filter, go-to-file |
| Multi-rename (Ctrl/⌘+M) | [N] [N2-5] [E] [C] [P] [YMD] [hms] placeholders, search/replace (plain or regex), case, counters, live preview, undo - on disk and inside archives |
| Synchronize dirs | compare trees by date/size/content, per-row direction, copy both ways |
| Customizable | choose the buttons beside each path (right-click the path row), columns, view mode and tree per panel, theme, panel font size, external editor |
| Updates | the macOS build checks GitHub releases and updates itself |
| Languages | English, French and Spanish - follows the system language, or pick one in Settings (applies on the next launch) |
| Also | branch view, quick filter (Ctrl+F), directory hotlist (Primary+D), swap panels, compare files by content |
| Library | Version | Used for |
|---|---|---|
.NET MAUI (Microsoft.Maui.Controls) |
10.0.110 | the UI framework - one shared UI for all three platforms |
maui-labs (Microsoft.Maui.Platforms.MacOS, .MacOS.Essentials) |
0.1.0-preview.14 | the native AppKit macOS head (not Mac Catalyst) |
maui-labs (Microsoft.Maui.Platforms.Linux.Gtk4, .Linux.Gtk4.Essentials) |
0.1.0-preview.14 | the GTK4 Linux head |
Microsoft.Maui.DevFlow (.Agent, .Agent.Gtk, .Client) |
0.1.0-preview.14 | the in-app agent and client the UI tests drive the real app through (Debug only) |
| Shiny.Maui.Controls | 2.4.0 | ribbon, motion icons, keyboard shortcuts, dialogs, toasts, data grids, table views, pills, badges, progress bars, buttons |
| Shiny.Maui.Controls.Markdown | 2.4.0 | Markdown in the lister, the editor and F1 help |
| Shiny.Maui.Controls.Desktop | 2.4.0 | AppKit / GTK keyboard sources for the shortcuts |
| Shiny.Maui.Shell | 7.0.3 | ViewModel-first navigation ([ShellMap], [ShellProperty]) |
| Shiny.Mediator.Maui | 6.12.0 | file-system-changed and go-to events between pages |
| Shiny.Extensions.DependencyInjection | 6.0.1 | [Singleton] source-generated service registration |
| Shiny.Extensions.Stores | 6.0.1 | [Bind] persisted settings |
| Shiny.Extensions.Localization.Generator | 2.1.2 | strongly typed StringsLocalized from the .resx files |
| SharpCompress | 1.0.0 | reading 7z, rar and compressed tars; bzip2 / zstd compression and the LZMA encoder behind the 7z writer |
| CommunityToolkit.Mvvm | 8.4.2 | [ObservableProperty] / [RelayCommand] view models |
| Microsoft.Extensions.Localization | 10.0.0 | the resource-string plumbing the localization generator builds on |
| Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.Debug | 10.0.0 | debug logging |
| System.IO.Compression · System.Formats.Tar (.NET) | 10.0 | zip read/write; tar read/write |
| xunit.v3 · xunit.runner.visualstudio | 3.2.2 · 3.1.5 | tests |
| Shouldly | 4.3.0 | test assertions |
| Microsoft.NET.Test.Sdk | 18.0.1 | test runner |
Every piece of UI text lives in src/ShinyCommander.Shared/Resources/Strings/: Strings.resx (English) plus
Strings.fr.resx and Strings.es.resx. The generator turns each key into a property on StringsLocalized (a method
ending in Format when the text has {0} placeholders). Code reads them through L (L.Delete_TrashTitle,
L.Op_CopyTitleFormat(what)), XAML through {l:Tr Key} - {l:Tr Cmd_Copy, Suffix=' (F5)'} appends untranslated
text such as a shortcut. The ribbon's keys (Cmd_*, Ribbon_*) come from the table in tools/ribbon.py, which
reports any it can't find.
To add a language, copy Strings.resx to Strings.<culture>.resx, translate the values, and add it to
Strings.Languages so Settings offers it. tests/ShinyCommander.Core.Tests/LocalizationTests.cs fails if a
language is missing a key or a {0} placeholder, or if the XAML uses a key that doesn't exist. In Debug, an unknown
{l:Tr} key throws as the page is built.
src/ShinyCommander.Core net10.0 - VFS (disk + archives), operations, search, multi-rename, compare (no MAUI)
src/ShinyCommander.Shared shared MAUI UI as linked source (ShinyCommander.Shared.props)
src/ShinyCommander.Windows net10.0-windows WinUI head
src/ShinyCommander.MacOS net10.0-macos AppKit head (maui-labs)
src/ShinyCommander.Linux net10.0 GTK4 head (maui-labs)
tests/ShinyCommander.Core.Tests
tools/ribbon.py generates the ribbon markup from one command table
tests/ShinyCommander.UITests UI tests driving the real macOS app via DevFlow (docs/testing.md)
website/ the product website - shinysoftware.github.io/Commander (.github/workflows/pages.yml)
docs/ROADMAP.md planned: custom button bar + user commands, side-by-side file diff
docs/RELEASING.md tag a version → signed/notarized macOS, Windows installer, Linux .deb/.rpm
The UI is shared as linked source because there's no Linux TFM and each head compiles its own XAML and source generators — the same pattern maui-labs and Shiny's own samples use.
dotnet test tests/ShinyCommander.Core.Tests # core, ~1s
tests/ShinyCommander.UITests/run.sh # the real macOS app through MAUI DevFlow, ~5 min
tests/ShinyCommander.UITests/run.sh --no-build -t F5_copies # one test, seconds (attaches to the running test app)The UI suite never types on your desktop or touches your settings - see docs/testing.md.
dotnet test tests/ShinyCommander.Core.Tests
# macOS (AppKit)
dotnet build src/ShinyCommander.MacOS && open src/ShinyCommander.MacOS/bin/Debug/net10.0-macos/osx-arm64/ShinyCommander.app
# Linux (needs GTK 4 / WebKitGTK typelibs - see the maui-labs Linux.Gtk4 README)
dotnet run --project src/ShinyCommander.Linux
# Windows (on Windows)
dotnet build src/ShinyCommander.Windows- macOS AppKit: Shiny's
Ribbonbody doesn't draw on the AppKit head yet (it builds its tab bodies after the native view exists), so that head swaps in a ribbon-styled bar generated from the same command table (tools/ribbon.py). Windows and Linux use the Shiny Ribbon directly. - Row/tab visuals use converters rather than
DataTriggers because the AppKit backend doesn't restore trigger setters on exit.