Surprisingly enough KDE’s Dolphin

Nightly Installers on the bottom:

• Windows

You’ll want the bottom x86_64.exe👍

Everything by voidtools is incredible and makes Windows slightly more bearable. It’s a shame Linux doesn’t have anything as good as it.

It’s free, but not open source though.

• https://www.altap.cz/
• Files
• Double Commander
• Dolphin
• mucommander

In no particular order.

I’ll be looking for an open-source option first today, but if not, I can wholeheartedly recommend the xplorer² from Zakbat. I’ve been using it for more than 10 years and it’s fantastic for me. As far as I know, this is the work of a single guy. It is not cheap, but it has worked extremely well and has been reliable for me for so many years that I can’t recommend it enough. It has a free trial to test it.

Double Commander is also worth mentioning

I’m sure there is something better, but currently I use Q-Dir for my work projects.

There’s a few of them, the open source options include Double Commander, Files, Explorer++, Spacedrive (links files from multiple devices into one explorer), and Sigma File Manager. QTTabBar is an extension for the windows file manager which provides tabbed browsing as well. Here’s a list covering these and many others with links to official websites for each one: https://alternativeto.net/software/windows-explorer/?p=2

(replying to everyone instead of each post)

thanks all - i was looking at some awesome windows lists on github but most were for file transfer clients not file explorers so i figured i’d ask. will check all of these out today.

As we’re in the Open Source community here, the massive list of possible answers is suddenly rather short, I’m afraid. Explorer++ might be your best bet.

I will be off topic as what I am going to suggest is not open source… But I myself looked for a long time what was the best free windows file manager and I settled up on FreeCommander.
By default UI is not nice but it’s possible to make it nice enough.

I use this one mainly because : you can use it for free, dual pan, it remembers tab history between sessions, tabs can be renamed and colored. Hope someone will suggest a good open source one but I don’t think there is any :-/

This is the only program that I wasn’t able to find a good open source alternative. Stuck with using XYplorer.

Open source alternatives are either stuck in 1990 or lack basic features.

FMan is pretty nice, not sure if it’s still maintained though

Are there any that integrate FTP support, such as Nautilus does on Linux?

Linux. I know you said that isn’t an option, but it’s still the best option.

Why are you stuck on windows? What’s stopping you from installing a GNU/Linux distro? Much easier to replace/customize anything. I don’t mean to suggest y when someone is asking x, rather I don’t see any reason to be using Windows (especially Windows 11) these days.