A file manager that does everything, beautifully

1Home

Home is where Omebly Explorer opens. It shows your drives, the folders you pinned, the files you opened lately and one-click actions.

Pin a folder: right-click any folder and choose Pin to Home. Right-click a pinned folder to unpin it or change its colour.

Quick actions: tidy your Downloads folder, turn files into a PDF, make a ZIP, find big files or duplicates, or empty the Recycle Bin, in one click.

Recent files are the files you opened lately, from any app. You can turn this off in ⋯ > Folder options.

2Finding your way around a folder

Open a folder or file with a double-click, or select it and press Enter. Prefer one click? Change it in ⋯ > Folder options.

Go back and forward with the arrows at the top left, Alt+← and Alt+→, Backspace, or the side buttons on your mouse. Alt+↑ goes up one folder.

Type a path: click the empty part of the path bar (or press Ctrl+L), type something like D:\Work and press Enter.

Views: Details, List, Tiles, Gallery and four icon sizes. Ctrl+mouse wheel changes the size, and each folder remembers its own view.

Columns and sorting: click a column to sort, and click again to reverse. Right-click the header to add any of 24 columns (dimensions, length, artist, date taken and more). All views > Group by groups by type, date or size, and Show only keeps just pictures, videos, documents or this week's files.

Hidden files and file extensions: both are in the ⋯ menu. Extensions are shown by default, so a file called photo.jpg.exe can't fool you.

Gallery view shows big pictures, which is perfect for photo folders.

3Tabs and windows

New tab: the + button or Ctrl+T. Middle-click a folder to open it in a new tab. Ctrl+W closes a tab, and Ctrl+Shift+T brings back the one you just closed.

Switch tabs with a click, or with Ctrl+Tab. Drag a tab out of the strip to give it its own window. Ctrl+N opens a new window.

Workspaces: save the tabs you have open (All views > Workspaces) and open the whole set again later in one click.

4Opening files without leaving the app

Double-click a file and it opens in a pop-up viewer inside Omebly Explorer. Press Space for a quick look and Esc to close it.

Pictures (JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP, HEIC, SVG, BMP, ICO and more): zoom with + and − or the mouse wheel, rotate with R and fit with 0. The arrow keys go through every picture in the folder.

PDF: pages down the side, page numbers, zoom and print. Home and End go to the first and last page.

Video and music (MP4, MKV, MOV, MP3, WAV, FLAC and more): Space plays and pauses, the arrows skip 5 seconds, and F is full screen. Put an .srt file with the same name next to a video to see its subtitles.

Also inside: Word, Excel and PowerPoint (a read-only preview). Text and code are coloured by language: press E to edit and Ctrl+S to save. Markdown, CSV tables, web pages (with their scripts off), fonts and archives open too. Ctrl+Page Down goes to the next file.

5The right-click menu

Right-click any file or folder. The most useful things are on the first menu, and Windows' own full menu is still there under Show more options.

Also on the menu: Open with, Cut, Copy, Rename (F2), Delete (Del sends it to the Recycle Bin; Shift+Del asks, then deletes for good), Add a note, Add to favourites, Add to shelf, Share, Print, Copy as path, Create shortcut and Properties (Alt+Enter).

6PDF tools on the right-click menu

Right-click any PDF (or a Word, Excel, picture or web page file) and choose PDF tools. They are the same 51 tools as on Omebly Tools, built into the app. They work with no internet, upload nothing, and don't need Microsoft Word.

Organise: merge, split, extract or remove pages, reorder, rotate, pages per sheet, resize, crop and batch.

Convert from PDF: to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, JPG, PNG, text, Markdown, EPUB and PDF/A, or extract the images.

Convert to PDF: from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, JPG and other pictures, web pages, Markdown, text and EPUB, or from a scan.

Edit: the PDF editor, sign, watermark, page numbers, header and footer, Bates numbering, bookmarks, metadata, fill and create forms, redact, remove comments, flatten and greyscale.

Protect and fix: add or remove a password, compress, optimise for the web, repair, OCR (make scans searchable) and compare two PDFs.

The tool opens with your file already loaded. Click the main button, and the result is saved next to the original with a new name, so nothing is ever overwritten. Ctrl+Z in Omebly Explorer takes it away again.

7ZIP, 7Z, RAR and other archives

Double-click a ZIP, 7Z, RAR, TAR or GZ file and it opens like a folder. Double-click a file inside to open it without extracting anything.

Extract: Extract all or Extract selected, or right-click the archive and choose Extract here. Password-protected archives ask for the password.

Make one: select files, right-click, Compress to, and pick ZIP (with an optional AES-256 password), TAR or TAR.GZ.

An archive can never write outside the folder you chose, and "zip bombs" (tiny files that expand into terabytes) are stopped.

8Copying and moving

Use Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V, or drag and drop (hold Ctrl to copy, Shift to move and Alt to make a shortcut).

A card shows the speed, the time left and the file it's on. You can pause, resume or cancel. If files with the same names are already there, it asks once for all of them: replace, skip, keep both, or decide one by one.

Undo: Ctrl+Z undoes copies, moves, renames, deletes and new folders, and Ctrl+Y redoes them.

Fast: thousands of small files copy up to 18 times faster than in Windows.

9Searching

In a folder: type in the search box and the list narrows as you type. Press Enter to search this folder and every folder inside it, including the words inside text files, documents and code.

The whole PC: search from Home. Omebly keeps its own index of file names, so results come instantly.

10The command bar

Press Ctrl+K, type what you want to do, and press Enter. It's the fastest way to anything: change the view, open a pinned folder, turn on the preview pane, switch theme, open Tools, zip what you selected, and more.

11Folder colours, tags and more ways to organise

Folder colours: right-click a folder, choose Folder colour, and pick one. Windows' File Explorer and the Open and Save windows show the colour too.

Notes keep a short note on any file or folder. Favourites are files you use all the time, kept in the sidebar.

The shelf is a holding place for files you're gathering from different folders, so you can copy or move them all at once.

Templates save a set of folders (for example Client > Invoices, Photos, Contracts), and New from template makes the same set anywhere. Tidy up sorts a messy folder into Pictures, Documents, Videos and other folders, and Undo puts it all back.

Tags: right-click any file, choose Tag, and pick a colour. Click the tag in the sidebar to see every file with it, from every folder.

12Renaming many files at once

Select several files and press F2.

Holiday {n} gives Holiday 01, Holiday 02, …. {name} keeps the old name, {date} adds the date the photo was taken (or the date it changed), and {folder} adds the folder's name.

You can also find and replace (patterns too), add text before or after, choose where the numbers start, and change the letters to UPPER, lower or Title case. Every new name is shown before anything changes, and Ctrl+Z undoes it.

13Tools: duplicates, disk space, clean-up, compare, rules, backup

Open ⋯ > Tools, or press Ctrl+K and type "Tools".

Clean up: find big files (over 500 MB), empty folders, downloads you haven't touched for 3 months, and temporary files Windows and apps leave behind. You always see the list first.

Compare two folders: see what's only on one side, newer or different, then make one folder match the other.

Rules: when a file arrives in a folder, move, copy, rename, convert or zip it by itself. For example, move every PDF in Downloads to Documents.

Backup: copy your folders to a USB or backup drive every time it's plugged in. Older versions are kept, and you can restore any of them.

Find duplicates: right-click a folder, then More tools > Find duplicates in this folder. Files with exactly the same content are found whatever their names. The oldest copy is kept, and the others go to the Recycle Bin in one click.

Disk space map: see what fills a drive or folder. The bigger the block, the bigger the file or folder. Click a block to look inside it.

14More tools: lock, shred, permissions

Lock with a password: the file is encrypted with AES-256, and only the password opens it. Shred deletes a file so it can never be recovered, and it asks twice first.

Who can open it shows a file's permissions in plain words. What is using this file? tells you which app has it open when Windows won't let you delete it.

Checksums (MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256) check a download. Photo privacy removes the location and camera details from photos before you share them.

15Preview pane and split view

Preview pane (Alt+P): see the selected file on the right without opening it. Alt+Shift+P shows the details pane, where you can edit a file's details too.

Split view: two folders side by side for dragging files between them. Press Ctrl+K and choose Split view.

16Cloud drives, phones and servers

OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox and iCloud show in the sidebar with each file's sync status. Right-click a file and choose Always keep on this device or Free up space.

Phones and cameras plugged in with USB show up under This PC. Map a network drive is on the This PC menu.

FTP, FTPS and SFTP servers: add a server once and it shows in the sidebar like a folder. Passwords stay in Windows Credential Manager.

17Make Omebly your default file manager

Open ⋯ > Folder options and tick Open folders and Win+E in Omebly Explorer. From then on, folders you open from the desktop, from other apps and with Win+E open in Omebly. Only your account is changed, and if Omebly ever fails to start, it gives folders back to File Explorer by itself.

Jump-to bar: while Omebly Explorer is open, every app's Open and Save window (Photoshop, Chrome, Word, and so on) gets a small bar with your pinned folders, one click away.

18Themes

There are two looks: Omebly Glass (dark and see-through) and Windows Light. Change it in ⋯ > Theme or with Ctrl+K.

19Updates

When a new version is out, Omebly Explorer shows Update Omebly Explorer when it opens. Click Update now: it downloads the update, checks that it really comes from Omebly (it's signed), installs it and opens again by itself. Your settings, pins and tags stay.

20Keyboard shortcuts

In the viewer: ← → previous and next, + − zoom, R rotate, 0 fit, F full screen, E edit text, and Ctrl+S save.