Freeware Tools: Far Manager 3.0

Far Manager is a program for managing files and archives in Windows operating systems. Far Manager works in text mode and provides a simple and intuitive interface for performing most of the necessary actions viewing files and directories and editing, copying, and renaming files. If you are tired of drag-and-drop file manipulation in the Windows' GUI, then FAR Manager, with its command line and DOS-like interface for file creation and editing is for you. As a text-based application, FAR Manager allows the user to manipulate files by renaming them.

Similar to your room, the computer needs a little cleaning from time to time, even if this just implies moving files and folders around. FAR is a full-featured file manager that bundles basically all the tools you need to browse and manage your files, as well as plugin support for adding new features.

With a Norton Commander-like interface, FAR is one of the easiest to use file managers in the market. It is fully customizable and allows users to configure shortcuts for basically every single action through intuitive and straightforward dialogs.

Also offering mouse support, the application comes with built-in file viewers and text editors, but it also allows you to open some formats with the default Windows programs.

Of course, it supports file associations for some user-defined file types and long file names. It's no surprise that FAR also boasts file highlight colors, a file search utility, video mode, a configurable user menu, compare folders tools, task lists, file view history and many other goodies.

One of the best things about FAR is that it supports plenty of plugins so, besides the ones that are already “factory-installed”, you can also download and integrate new ones, thus adding new features to the app.

Thanks to plugins, FAR also provides a FTP client, a network browser, a process list and a temporary panel, but also dedicated tools to perform an advanced comparison and case conversion.

On the good side, this application impresses mostly thanks to the high customization power it offers to its users. You can adjust basically everything, from colors to shortcuts and layout.

Overall, it's no doubt FAR is one of the best file managers out there. It's light, it supports plugins, its open source and features a multi-language interface. It does not take much time to get acquainted with its features. Simply brilliant.