Total Commander

A little bit of history

I discovered Norton Commander (ok, I might lie actually - I was introduced to it by my cousin) somewhere around 1997 or 1998 on a computer running Windows 95. Two blue panels, a command line at the bottom, function keys along the bottom edge. F5 to copy, F6 to move, F8 to delete. That was it. No dragging, no dropping, no right-clicking. Just you and the keyboard. I was fascinated to see him changing one floppy disk after another. He used to come along to show me how to repair my Compaq Presario Pentium 1 75 MHz with 16 MB of RAM - because that Compaq used a hidden diagnostics partition on the hard drive to store BIOS settings and setup tools so when Windows 95 broke on my machine (for various reasons - HDD failed, partition tables damage) that hidden partition was destroyed.

So, the only solution was to call my wizard cousin which was some sort of a guru to me and he came along with many floppy disks that contained the initial Compaq QuickRestore to rebuild the hidden partition and that was just to get the machine to recognize the hard drive properly.

Only after this step - you were able to install a fresh copy of Windows 95 using a CD.

It took us - approximately 2 hours to restore the BIOS and another 2 hours to install Windows 95, then 2 hours to install a few programs and one or two games. Because we used to suffer for like 5-6 hours we used to play for another 6 hours. From 6 PM he usually went home the next morning around 6 AM - 7 AM. 2-3 packages of cigarettes and 2-4 litres of Coca-Cola. If you are young and you read this - please don't do it - it's not worth it - I stopped smoking 20 years ago and one of my biggest lifetime regrets (sorry for being off-topic).

After Windows 98 came out (I tried it for the first time I think back in 1999), I switched to Windows Explorer. Better said - I tried. But I hated it. One panel. Constant back-and-forth between folders. Copy here, go there, paste, go back. It drove me crazy especially when I had to move files between five or six folders.

Then I heard about Windows Commander - I don't remember if I read about it in a magazine or it was my cousin or something else. Two panels side by side, just like Norton Commander but on Windows. I installed it and never went back to Windows Explorer for file management.

The author

The developer, Christian Ghisler from Switzerland, started the project back in September 1993. He originally called it Windows Commander but Microsoft told him to stop using the word "Windows" in 2002 - trademark issues. So he renamed it to Total Commander with version 5.50. That was over 24 years ago. He is still the main developer. Still updating it. Still answering questions on the official forums himself - one of the reasons I am writing this review is because someone suggested us as a mirror. I was planning to review Total Commander anyway so I decided to prioritise it.

The latest stable version at the time of this review is 11.56 and there is a beta version 11.57 beta 4 released on 18 March 2026. That is ... 33 years of continuous updates from one developer. Similar to 7-Zip, KeePass and many other apps I reviewed on dAppCDN - Total Commander puts functionality over everything else. I install it on every Windows machine I use. It is on my - software list "to install" right after a fresh Windows copy.

What Is Total Commander

Total Commander is a dual-pane file manager for Windows. Think of it as a replacement for Windows Explorer - except with two panels side by side, a built-in FTP client, archive handling, a batch rename tool, a file viewer and about a thousand other features I will try to cover in this review.

Christian Ghisler wrote it in Object Pascal using Delphi for the 32-bit version and Lazarus/Free Pascal for the 64-bit version. The 32-bit executable is tiny - between 5.9 and 7 MB. On my machine it starts faster than I can blink. The 64-bit version is a bit larger because Lazarus stores more metadata in the binary but it is still small compared to anything built on Electron or .NET.

Total Commander runs on every version of Windows. And I mean every version - Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, 11 - all of them. I ran Total Commander on a Windows 98 machine back in the day and it runs on my Windows 11 laptop right now with the same shortcuts. The 32-bit version works on all of them. The 64-bit version starts from Windows XP onwards. There is also a free Android version which I will talk about later.

Oh and it is fully portable. I have had a copy on my USB stick for years. All settings, all plugins, everything travels with me. Plug it into any PC, run it, do my work, pull the stick out. No traces left on the host machine.

The Dual-Pane Thing - Why It Matters

Some people hear "dual-pane file manager" and go - so what? Two windows instead of one, big deal. But it is a big deal and let me tell you why - I created below two examples:

Example with Windows Explorer

You want to copy files from folder A to folder B. So you open folder A. Select files. Copy. Now where was folder B again? You click around. You scroll. You find it and go ahead and paste it. Once you've pasted the copied files you have to return to folder A for the next batch. The entire process is back and forth and back again for 30 minutes - a repetitive task.

Example with Total Commander

The left panel is folder A. The right panel is folder B. Both visible, both open, at the same time. Select files on the left, press F5 and they go to the right. That is it. I have been doing this for so many years that becomes a second nature as they say - my hands are on autopilot now :)

Now try to imagine or multiply that by 200 files across 10 folders. Or by a server backup at 2 AM when you just want it finished and go to sleep. As you can see, the dual-pane layout saves time!

And here is something most reviews skip - the keyboard shortcuts come straight from Norton Commander. F3 to preview a file without opening any app. F5 to copy. F6 to move or rename. F7 to create a folder. F8 to delete. Ctrl+M to batch rename. Alt+F7 for advanced search. Once you've learned these you become more fluent in your repetitive task - I learned most of these by taking notes on paper in the late 90s. I did once, twice, a hundred times until it stuck with me forever. And the best part? They still work exactly the same in 2026 - I mean how cool is that? I think this should serve as an example to any "genius" who messes the shortcuts and commands every few years - learn from Mr. Christian Ghisler, the king of consistency - thank you!

To make an analogy think about the physical buttons on cars - you saw the madness when most brands started to copy Tesla and introduced screens everywhere. The feedback was negative but they still kept doing it because it was "modern". What about the safety? Or the comfort? Now - after a total fiasco - more and more brands are praising the buttons and started to introduce them again. What a mess and the same with Total Commander - it focused on consistency and reliability. It is obvious for me as a user that I need a working product not a shiny thing. Functionality above everything else won my heart.

Features - I made a short list

• Dual-pane interface - two panels, left is source, right is destination.
• Tabbed browsing on each panel - I keep about 5-6 tabs open per side at all times.
• Built-in FTP and FTPS with SSL/TLS, background transfers and resume after disconnect. SFTP through a plugin.
• Archive handling where you can browse ZIP, 7Z, RAR, TAR, GZ, CAB as if they were normal folders - this alone saves me hours.
• The Multi-Rename Tool at Ctrl+M - batch rename with placeholders, regex, counters and even metadata from plugins. I rename hundreds of photos with this thing.
• Synchronise directories - compare two folders and sync, works with local, network and FTP.
• The file viewer at F3 opens huge files instantly because it only loads what you see on screen. Press Space on a folder to see its total size - and if you have Everything installed it does it instantly. Built-in search at Alt+F7 - by name, content, date, size, even inside archives.
• Checksum verification for MD5, SHA1, SHA256 - I use this every time I copy large backups to make sure nothing got corrupted.
• Background transfers so you keep working while files move.
• Full portable mode from USB.
• AES256 encryption for saved FTP and cloud passwords.
• Etc.

Please note: There are features I use daily that most people never discover - the built-in text comparison tool, the ability to search inside archives, splitting large files into smaller chunks for email. Total Commander will always surprise you with a new feature you never thought it was there.

The Plugin System

This is where Total Commander becomes even more powerful and it is somewhat similar to other popular software such as IrfanView (totally different purpose but same architecture). Christian Ghisler built a plugin system with four types - WCX, WDX, WFX and WLX. The names look like random letters but as you probably figure it out already, each type does a different thing and once you understand them, they actually make sense.

WCX plugins - are designed to handle archives. The most popular one is Total7zip which connects Total Commander to the 7-Zip library. With it installed, you can browse 7z, XZ and even WIM files as if they were regular folders.

WDX plugins - they pull metadata out of files and show it right in the file list. The DirSizeCalc plugin calculates folder sizes in the background - something Windows Explorer still struggles with after 30 years. Another one, MediaInfoWDX, shows video duration, bitrate and codec information right in the file list columns. Also useful if you are tired of opening each video to check its properties.

WFX plugins - allows you to connect to remote systems. There is an official Cloud plugin by Ghisler himself that gives you access to Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox and Box without installing their heavy desktop clients. Also, another WFX plugin can connect to Android devices through ADB - it is again, much faster than the MTP protocol that Windows uses by default.

WLX plugins - you can add preview capabilities to the file viewer (F3). SumatraPDF (the popular PDF reader) lets you preview documents. Imagine is a fast image viewer that handles RAW files from cameras. Installing plugins is easy by the way.

Note on the plugin install process: You download the plugin archive, open it inside Total Commander and the program will detect the plugin installer automatically. Click "YES" and that's it.

The Interface

I have to be honest - Total Commander looks old. The default icons remind me of Windows 98. The toolbar buttons are small. The fonts look like they belong to a different decade. But as I keep saying in all my reviews posted on dAppCDN - I choose functionality over design every time. And here is the thing - that "ugly" interface shows me 50 or 60 files in a single panel without scrolling. A modern "pretty" file manager with big icons and lots of whitespace shows maybe 15. When you work with thousands of files, density matters more than looks.

That said, it is not 1998 anymore. Total Commander now has dark mode - it took a while to get it right and some dialog boxes still look a bit off but the main interface looks much better in dark than the default light theme. And you can install icon packs and change the fonts to make it look more modern.

The "Everything" Integration

I need to mention this because it changed how I use Total Commander.

If you install "Everything" by Voidtools (a tiny search tool that indexes your entire NTFS drive in seconds), Total Commander can talk to it through IPC. The result? Press "Space" on a folder and instead of waiting for Total Commander to scan every subfolder, it pulls the pre-calculated size from "Everything" instantly. On my drive with about 1 million files, this takes less than a second.

The search integration is even better. In the Find Files dialog (Alt+F7), type ed: before your query to search with "Everything" in the current directory. Or ev: to search the entire drive. The speed difference compared to Windows Search is embarrassing. I once timed it - a content search across 500,000 files took Windows Search over 4 minutes. Everything did it in about 8 seconds and Total Commander showed the results in its own panel.

But it was always like that, the search was slow - especially in the older Windows versions and this was also a reason why new software appeared - now some things improved lately.

The Android Version

Total Commander on Android is free. Completely free. No ads (despite what the Play Store might say - there is a link to download plugins and Google counts that as an "ad"). No subscription. No in-app purchases.

It gives you two panels on tablets and foldable devices, FTP and SFTP access through plugins, LAN browsing, cloud storage access for Google Drive, OneDrive and Dropbox, and a built-in media player. The root support lets you browse system folders on rooted devices.

I have to mention one thing though - the Play Store version has restrictions because Google removed the ability to install APKs from within apps back in 2022. If you want the full version with APK installation and self-updating, download the "Freedom Version" directly from the official website. Ghisler maintains it specifically because Google keeps restricting what apps can do on Android. You can find it on the official Total Commander website (and we hope to list it here on dAppCDN soon).

Security and Privacy

Total Commander protects saved FTP and cloud passwords using AES256 encryption with a master password. Earlier versions used a weaker algorithm that security researchers eventually cracked so this upgrade was important. When you set a master password, all your credentials in the wcx_ftp.ini file get encrypted. Even if someone copies that file, they cannot read your passwords without the master password.

On Android, you can unlock the master password with your fingerprint or face recognition.

And like many apps I review on dAppCDN - Total Commander does not collect your data. No telemetry, no tracking, no account required. The developer stated this in the privacy policy and from what I can see it is true. The software never phones home unless you manually check for updates.

The Nag Screen - This deserves a few words because it is an entire philosophy behind it.

Total Commander is well, I don't know how to say it better - technically speaking it is shareware but it has a special place in my heart. Like WinRAR (which I reviewed on dAppCDN as well), the trial never actually expires. After 30 days, a window pops up asking you to click one of three numbered buttons before the program starts. That is the "punishment" for not paying but still "allowed" by the author.

But here is the deal - a single licence costs 42 EUR (plus VAT in Europe). That is a one-time payment. You get free upgrades forever. A licence bought in 1998 for Windows Commander still works with Total Commander 11.56 today. I bought mine years ago and never paid again.

In 2026, when every other software wants a monthly subscription, a one-time payment with lifetime updates feels almost too generous. Christian Ghisler said on the forum that he earns enough from new registrations to keep going without charging for updates. He also said he tolerates the use of the unregistered version by private users who genuinely cannot afford it - but expects companies to pay. I think that is a very fair approach (more below).

Total Commander Alternatives

Paid Alternatives

• Directory Opus (DOpus): Paid (~50 EUR per version) More customisable interface, very mouse-friendly, supports scripting: but it costs more over time since you pay per major version.
• XYplorer: (~40 EUR) Good mix of dual-pane and single-pane, strong scripting, tabs everywhere and also a one-time payment with lifetime option

Free Alternatives

• FreeCommander: The free alternative to Total Commander - looks similar, works OK, but it is slower and the plugin system is smaller
• Double Commander: Free, Open source, runs on Windows, macOS and Linux: the closest cross-platform clone of Total Commander
• Midnight Commander: Free, Terminal-based, runs on Linux and macOS: for people who want the Norton Commander feeling on Unix systems

Final Thoughts

I have been using Total Commander since the Windows Commander days. That is about 27 years now. The interface still looks old and the default icons need replacing. But once I customised the colours and installed a modern icon pack, I stopped caring about how it looks. What matters is that F5 still copies, F6 still moves and the whole thing runs in under 10 MB of RAM. Give yourself a week with it. If you go back to Windows Explorer after that, I will be very surprised. As I say functionality over beauty!

Full Disclosure: Mr. Christian Ghisler I was young, poor and the truth is I couldn't afford a license many years ago. Of course, not just for your amazing piece of work - this applies to both Total Commander and WinRAR (and some others I probably missed) so I cannot thank you enough for still allowing people like me to use their software. So, dear reader, whenever you can afford it - please consider buying a license to show some love and appreciation for someone special that worked consistently for the last 33 years! Thank you!

Main bugfixes:

Security issue in unrar.dll fixed. If you just want the new dlls, get them here Updated 7-zip dlls Reissue with corrected version number in resources