Explorer

A Windows 11–style file manager for Linux, built with Python + PySide6 (Qt 6). It pairs a familiar Explorer layout (navigation sidebar, breadcrumb address bar, details/icon views, tabs) with native Linux integration for drives, network shares and the system icon themes.

Download

Grab a ready-to-run build for Linux x86_64 from the latest release:

• AppImage (recommended) — bundles its own icon and .desktop, so it shows the taskbar/menu icon (incl. Wayland):

  chmod +x Explorer-x86_64.AppImage
  ./Explorer-x86_64.AppImage

• Single-file binary (explorer-linux-x86_64):

  chmod +x explorer-linux-x86_64
  ./explorer-linux-x86_64

To make it your default file manager:

xdg-mime default explorer.desktop inode/directory

Features

Browsing & views

• Navigation sidebar: Quick access, This PC (mounted + unmounted drives), and Network, with an expandable, lazy-loaded drive/folder tree.
• Eight view modes like Explorer — Extra large / Large / Medium / Small icons, List, Details, Tiles, Content (Ctrl+Shift+1…8), plus Ctrl+scroll zoom.
• Tabs: open folders in new tabs (Ctrl+T, Ctrl+W, right‑click → Open in new tab).
• Breadcrumb address bar (click to edit), search in the current folder.
• Resizable columns, natural sorting, image thumbnails.

File operations

• New folder / text file, cut / copy / paste, delete, rename, properties.
• Drag & drop within the view and onto sidebar folders/drives (move/copy).
• Open with an application chooser, open in terminal, copy as path.
• Pin folders to Quick access (menu or drag onto Quick access).

Drives & network

• Mount / unmount local drives via udisksctl.
• Network drives & FTP/SFTP (also SMB/WebDAV/NFS when the matching gvfs backend is installed) via GVFs/gio; saved locations live under Network.

Appearance

• 8 color themes — Fluent, Aurora, Porcelain, Cobalt — each in light & dark.
• Icon sets: use any installed icon theme, or tinted flat icons that recolor with the active color theme. Import your own icon themes / .qss colors.
• Rounded, compact Explorer‑like UI; adjustable icon size.

Other

• English / Polish UI, switchable at runtime.
• Settings (theme, view mode, language…) are remembered between sessions.

Screenshots

Large icons — Cobalt	List — Porcelain (light)

Medium icons — Aurora

Requirements

• Python 3.10+
• PySide6 (Qt 6)
• Optional, for the matching features:
  • udisks2 / udisksctl — mount/unmount drives
  • gvfs with gvfsd-ftp, gvfsd-sftp (and gvfs-smb / gvfs-nfs for those) — network/FTP
  • gio, gtk-launch — Open with / launching apps

Run from source

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install PySide6
python -m explorer

Build a standalone binary (Linux)

Requires nuitka and patchelf:

pip install nuitka
./build_nuitka_linux.sh        # -> dist/explorer

Tests

pip install pytest pytest-qt
pytest

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