Review: Commander One version 2
The Finder in macOS is a familiar face for long time Mac owners. With the exception of Column view, a Mac user from 1989 would find herself comfortable with the look and feel of macOS today. And while familiarity is a good thing, power users (like myself) often want more pro features, like a two column layout, quick access to the terminal command prompt, and more.
Mac file management tools are a small cottage industry in the Mac world. Among the popular alternatives is Eltima’s Commander One. A few months ago, version Commander One 2.0 dropped, and the company reached out to me to see if I was interested in taking their app for a spin. (Disclosure: Eltima sent me a free licensed copy, with the Pro Pack, for this review.)
The screenshots below feature Commander One, using a custom theme that I personally made.
Feature-wise, Commander One boasts many useful features as a free Finder alternative. Unlike the macOS finder, nearly every action in Commander One can be controlled by the keyboard. Commander One can also monitor and list all running processes on your Mac, and you can quit any process you like with just a click. Common commands such as View, Edit, Copy Move, New Folder and Delete are also visible at the bottom of each Commander One window, triggered by either a keyboard shortcut or mouse click.
Aside from its two column layout support, Commander One (via the $30 Pro Pack addition) gives users the ability to customize the interface’s themes to your liking. With the Pro Pack, users can use Commander One’s built-in FTP manager as well as access files from cloud storage (like Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, WebDav, OneDrive, BackBlaze B2, etc.). Pro Pack users can also mount both iOS and Android devices for the purpose of accessing photos and videos from either device. Commander One also includes Archiver for Mac, making it quick work to both compress and uncompress .zip files. Other formats, like TBZ, TGZ, RAR are supported, with RAR compression promised in a future version.
Eltima offers a 15 day free trial of all its Pro Pack features, and supports a full money back guarantee if the Pro Pack doesn’t live up to your expectations.
Generally speaking, I like Commmander One. With it, I have quick access to all my hard drives and network drives, all from within one window interface. I also like having quick access to the process viewer, without having to launch a separate app or fire up the terminal.
Moving through the interface is easy and fast, and – as I mentioned before – I can keep my hand on the keyboard without having to rely on the mouse for my day to day file management tasks. Incidentally, keyboard shortcuts can be customized to your liking from within Commander One’s preference pane.
While there is a lot to love in Commander One, Mac users moving from the macOS Finder to Commander One will notice a few interesting quirks. For instance, tapping the space bar in the macOS Finder brings up QuickLook. In Commander One, the same action selects a file. Pressing the space bar will toggle file selection / deselection. This is especially useful when performing actions on files / folders that are not located next to each other.
CommanderOne users can toggle QuickLook with the keyboard shortcut Command Y. This took some getting used to. Also, when capturing a screenshot (via Command-Shift-4), I could no longer tap the spacebar to select the entire window. Instead, I had to drag the mouse over the window to take a screenshot. While I like the buttons on the bottom of the window interface, I wish there was a method to customize them. I don’t like the “Delete” button, for example. If I could remove it, I would. In my view, because of its location on the lower right corner of the interface, it’s very easy to accidentally trigger.
Like most good Mac programs, Commander One has many powerful features available for free. You can kick the tires and see if the program is right for you. Beyond its basic functionality, power users will appreciate the “one stop shop” approach with Commander One’s ability to mount both iOS and Android devices, as well as managing / accessing all cloud and network servers from one place.
-Krishna
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