QGExplorer
A familiar, no-nonsense file manager for macOS — especially if you came from Windows or Linux
QGExplorer
A familiar, no-nonsense file manager for macOS — especially if you came from Windows or Linux.
QGExplorer is a macOS file manager built around the patterns power users already know from File Explorer and Linux file managers — editable path bar with autocomplete, detailed list views with sortable columns, an expandable sidebar tree that behaves like a tree, full keyboard navigation, tabs, and a real preview pane. If you've ever felt that managing files on macOS asks you to give up habits you spent years building, this is for you.
It's also fast, free of clutter, has no telemetry, no popups, no upsells, and intentionally no network access. What's on your disk stays on your disk.
Familiar from day one
Editable path bar — type or paste a path and press Enter to jump there
Detailed list view with sortable, resizable columns (Name, Size, Modified, Created, Kind)
Sidebar that expands like a real tree — click to drill in, not magic shortcuts
Tabs with shared layout, full keyboard navigation
Right-click context menu with the operations you'd expect, on files and folders alike
Navigation that gets out of the way
List, table, and icon views with adjustable density
Sidebar with Suggested Locations, Devices, and your own Spaces (named groups of folder links)
Reveal-in-sidebar — jump from any folder back to its place in the tree
Path bar with breadcrumbs and right-click menus on each crumb
Native macOS window tabs
A preview pane that actually previews
Images with full EXIF / IPTC / GPS, two zoom modes, prev/next between siblings
Text and source files with monospace rendering; PDF with metadata
Audio and video with a built-in player and playlist queue
Browse inside ZIP, TAR, 7z, RAR, and more — search contents and extract single entries without unpacking the whole thing
Quick Actions on selected files
Rotate / Convert images while preserving every metadata field
Create PDF from images
Remove background using Vision
Open in Markup with the toolbar already showing
Archives done right
Bundled libarchive with mbedTLS — reads ZIP, TAR (gz/bz2/xz), 7z, RAR, and more
Compress with Options: format, compression level, optional password
Password-protected ZIP that actually encrypts
Drag entries from inside an archive straight into any folder
Filters that find what you need
Type filter (images, documents, code, archives, media), tag filter, date filter (created or modified, exact or range)
⌘T / ⌘⇧T — instant "last 24 hours" filter, toggle off with the same shortcut
Inline type-filter chips in the search field
Daily file operations
Slow-click rename, drag & drop, copy / paste, Move to Trash
Move-to-Space and Move-to-Folder submenus in the path bar and sidebar
Drag from Finder into the empty pane area to import
Drag a PDF page from another app to save it here
Move-to-Trash protection on system folders
Looks the way you want
Theme presets including System Default (follows your Light/Dark mode automatically)
Save, edit, and switch your own custom palettes
Sidebar transparency slider — let your wallpaper show through
Privacy
QGExplorer is sandboxed and only sees folders you grant through the standard macOS picker. No network entitlement, no analytics, no update server, no telemetry of any kind. It's a local file browser. That's the entire promise.