Many Mac power users have long felt that the built-in Finder app in OS X doesn’t quite cut the mustard, despite Apple’s incremental improvements with each OS X update. This has spawned a number of alternatives over the years, and one of the latest entries into the group is Eltima Software’s Commander One (free/$30). The new dual-pane file manager for Mac is written entirely in Swift and designed specifically for OS X users, providing not only basic file management but a number of advanced features that power users will love — especially those who grew up in an era when dual-panel tools like this one were more the norm.
You can view each panel in one of three view modes, and open unlimited tabs in each, make multiple selections and queue files up for various operations, automatically rename files during copy and move operations, and setup custom hotkeys for any action. Local and network drives are fully supported, and you can use Spotlight for basic searches or construct more advanced searches using regular expressions.
The $30 PRO upgrade adds even more powerful advanced features, including support for mounting FTP and SFTP servers, support for compressing, extracting, and searching in RAR, TarGz and 7zip archives, and even mounting iOS devices and browsing their file systems directly.
One particularly interesting and unique feature is direct integration with Dropbox, allowing users to browse their online Dropbox folder as if it’s a drive — useful for those who don’t want to sync their entire Dropbox down to their local Mac storage. And Dropbox links can even be created and shared from within Commander One. Power users who are feeling nostalgic for the days of Norton Commander will definitely like what Commander One has to offer.
