14 DAY TRIAL // Last week, after having in my hands a file manager called XPlorer, I find it really funny to have found another one that has almost the same name, today's target name being XYplorer. Hopefully next week's file manager won't be XZplorer, but we'll have to live and see...until then, let's get down to business with this one!
Apart from the name and category they're part of, XYplorer and XPlorer have nothing in common, so I'll leave this issue behind and get to XYplorer. So, what's so special with it?
XYplorer's last release is 5.20.0028 and is dated less than a week ago. What I have here is a very strange trial version, because despite the fact that it expires after 21 days and has an initial nag screen, you have a chance out of ten to have your settings reset to the factory defaults. I haven't seen such a "limitation" before, and I must say that this sounds like having a trial run with a plane that may stop its engines in a flight out of ten, until you buy it. Even worse, the price of this program is 37.95$, which sounds too much for me, because I am sure it doesn't even gets close to Total Commander, but let's be open minded and see what we have here without any prejudice!
Running the program for the first time is an extremely easy task for everyone, because you don't have to worry about any installation process. XYplorer comes inside a 909KB ZIP archive, and all you have to do is unpack it to a folder on your hard drive and run it from there. Even better, you can use this program from any storage device, for example a USB stick or bootable CD.
This program's interface is very easy to use and looks fine, but there's one big problem: this is not a two pane file manager, and its looks remind me of Windows Explorer. This may be good for people that can't get used to programs like Total Commander or Frigate, but for most of us, this isn't good at all. The good part that remains is that XYplorer can use as much file tabs as you wish, and file transfers between the locations you have opened can be initiated.
This program has a lot of work put into it, and this shows. When you select a file inside the file area, at the bottom of the main window you can check its properties, version information (this is only available for setup packages usually), preview (the preview is available even for pictures, audio and video files!) and RAW view. At the bottom of the main window you can also take advantage of the advanced file finder tool or get a report about current folder or file list and send it to clipboard, a text file or printer.
XYplorer is not really easy to use, but it's highly customizable and I must say that its preview and information features are quite impressive. The problem for beginners is that the Help file is completely useless, but the good part for experienced users is that this program has a lot of keyboard shortcuts and mouse tricks to discover inside the Help menu.
A well organized Favorites system can help you speed up your disk browsing activity even more, visual filters can be applied to the file browser, the view modes available include detailed view and 128X128 thumbnails, and configuration files can be saved and loaded as needed.
These being said, there's still a little to discover, but I won't take away that pleasure from you and I'll move on to the conclusions.
The Good
XYplorer has a nice interface and an impressive feature list that includes favorites management, file transfers between locations opened inside various tabs and excellent customization possibilities.
The Bad
There's one thing that makes me really sad about this program, the fact that all this work put into it could have produced an excellent two pane file manager, but the way things are, XYplorer is too expensive to worth its price.
The Truth
Each time I see a good program I feel happy, but when I see good programs that are overpriced and sometimes follow a wrong approach to the problem they're trying to solve, that's absolutely depressing. I won't lie, XYplorer just gave me a depression, but I'll try to get over it. I only hope that you'll find this program useful and enjoy it, because there's one thing I am sure of: XYplorer is a file manager worth trying for sure!
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
