The file organiser that focuses on what doesn't matter.
ExplorerFocus is a Windows Explorer replacement for people who always work in the same folders. Configurable profiles, clean trees, a preview that opens almost anything — code, documents, books — and operations that actually tell you what's happening. Without the shell's noise.
Windows 10 / 11Self-contained · single-file~115 MB
Rich preview pane. Each file type with its ideal rendering.
Text with syntax highlight via AvalonEdit, images decoded in the background, PDFs rendered by the Edge engine (WebView2), Markdown converted to HTML with a dark theme by Markdig. Individually toggleable. Cancels previous load if you change selection.
SOURCE · MainViewModel.cs · C#
1 namespace ExplorerFocus.ViewModels;
/// <summary>Main view-model.</summary>
public partial classMainViewModel
{
private readonly ProfileManager _profile;
public PreviewViewModel PreviewVM { get; }
publicMainViewModel(ProfileManager p)
{
_profile = p;
PreviewVM = new("appearance");
}
}
MARKDOWN · README.md
ExplorerFocus
A focused Windows Explorer replacement. Built around configurable folders, it forgets everything that doesn't matter.
net10.0-windows · WPF · single-file
Note — preview works with Edge WebView2 installed (ships with Windows 10/11).
Floating window shows per-file gauge, real speed, ETA, global count. Pause, resume, cancel. Up to 6 parallel operations. Get on with your life while it runs.
Auto-detect new extensions. Shared across profiles.
Enter a folder with .dwg, .psd, .bak? An aggregated dialog asks once. Per-row picker (browse to the .exe; name auto-resolved by FileVersionInfo). Mark as ignored those you don't care about. The list persists.
A 1.8s tooltip over any file shows computed size, dates, attributes. Folders carry the recursive size — computed lazily, with a semaphore to avoid hammering the disk.
Normal click selects. Shift+click extends with "majority decides" semantics — if the range is mostly already selected, it unmarks; otherwise it marks. Ctrl+click toggles individually. No more "I lost all selections by accident".
Self-contained, single-file, compressed and digitally signed. Copy to a flash drive and it runs on any Windows 10/11. net10.0-windows + WPF — no dependencies outside the executable's folder.
Not just the menus — every dialog, every message, every tooltip. Pick one and the interface changes on the spot: nothing to restart, nothing to reinstall.
Manufacturer, model, firmware and serial number. Platter or solid state — and it says which, because a platter pays a seek penalty. Bus, sector size, partition scheme, the device underneath. What the file system really supports: EFS, per-file compression, hard links, junctions and symbolic links, sparse files, quotas, ACLs, the USN change journal, case sensitivity. And SMART data, when the disk gives it.
Manufacturer · Model · Firmware · Serial · SMART · GPT/MBR · Sector size
Everything the machine knows about itself — and never shows.
Firmware identity and serial numbers, when the machine was built, what is soldered to the board, the memory slot by slot, and how Windows was installed. Read-only: it never goes online and never asks for elevation.
SMBIOS · Firmware · Memory · Devices · Windows install
Windows says the file is open somewhere and never says where. This one knows, because it lives inside the explorer. It also answers three questions the system's own manager doesn't: what runs from your user folder, what is not signed, and which of two copies of the same program is which version. Ending a process asks first — with the name, the PID and the window title — and the ones that would blue-screen the machine have no button at all.
SFTP, FTP/FTPS and WebDAV — the explorer reaches the server.
Connect to SFTP, FTP/FTPS and WebDAV (Nextcloud, ownCloud, NAS, IIS). Browse, preview, upload and download, create folders, rename and copy/move — with byte-level progress and cancel. Edit remote files locally and sync on save. Password or SSH key auth; secrets encrypted with DPAPI.
SFTP · FTP/FTPS · WebDAV
Free: 1 SFTP/FTP/FTPS connection — browse and preview only. PREMIUM unlocks WebDAV, multiple connections and all operations.
Dropbox and OneDrive — your cloud inside the explorer.
Connect to Dropbox and OneDrive via secure OAuth — no passwords stored. Browse, preview, upload and download, create folders, rename and copy/move, like a local folder. Your files never pass through our servers.
Dropbox · OneDrive
PREMIUM: required from the first connection — browsing, preview and all operations.
Eight book formats — preview and read, without leaving the explorer.
Instant preview of any .epub, .mobi, .azw, .azw3, .prc or .fb2: cover, table of contents and the opening text. Open the full book in its own reader, with chapter navigation, page jump, auto-scroll and your reading position remembered. Comics too: .cbz and .cbr open page by page, without unpacking hundreds of megabytes first.
Paper mode. The same book, another look: two facing pages, the spine down the middle, paper with grain and lamp light, and the sheet folding under your hand as it turns. One button cycles plain · paper · night paper, and plain stays the default. It does not become a real book — no texture, no sound of the page, no smell, none of the weight of picking it up and putting it down — but a screen can come close. What that buys is comfort, and comfort is personal: everyone reads better in their own way. This is simply one more.
EPUB · MOBI · AZW · AZW3 · PRC · FB2 · CBZ · CBR
Free: preview — cover, contents and a first look inside. PREMIUM: full reader — navigation, page jump, auto-scroll, paper mode, page-turn and memory of your last 20 books.Books you own open. Books bought with DRM stay locked to the store that sold them — the app explains why when it finds one.
Word, Excel, PowerPoint and more — see without opening anything.
Preview Word (.doc/.docx), Excel, PowerPoint, RTF and OpenDocument (text, sheet and presentation) right in the pane. Audio and video play in the preview, with a floating window and volume/speed controls. A marker flags files that have a preview; password-protected files are flagged without asking for the password.
Word · Excel · PowerPoint · RTF · OpenDocument · Audio · Video
One click records the microphone into the current folder. Pick the microphone, watch the live level meter, adjust the recording volume and save as WAV or M4A/AAC.
Scan from the flatbed or the feeder (ADF), many sheets at once. Choose the resolution and colour — colour, grayscale or black & white. Save as JPEG/PNG or merge everything into a multi-page PDF, and keep adding sheets to the same PDF.
Flatbed · Feeder (ADF) · Colour · Multi-page PDF
Free: 1 flatbed page, with a watermark. PREMIUM: multiple pages, feeder (ADF) and no watermark.
Double-click (or Browse inside) to enter the archive — browse the contents, preview and copy files out without extracting everything. Read-only; Open with… still opens them in WinRAR/WinZip/7-Zip.
Record the screen straight into the folder — with an optional camera.
Pick a region of any monitor (or the whole screen) and record to MP4 with the microphone. Add the camera: switch screen⇄camera with transitions (fade, wipe, slide, mosaic), show it as PiP in a corner, or side by side in split screen.
Region · Microphone · System sound · Camera · PiP · Split screen · Transitions · MP4
Free: watermark + 15 s and no sound. PREMIUM: no watermark, no time limit and with sound (microphone + system).
Intro and end cards for your videos — right in the recording.
Give your recordings (screen and camera) an intro card, a permanent text banner and a credits-style end card (up to 10 lines). 5 independent models, each with 3 presentations, logo, background colour and an episode badge — built for a consistent video series.
Intro · Banner · End (credits) · 5 models · Logo · Episode badge
PREMIUM. Discreet “Made with ExplorerFocus” signature on the end card.
Narrate your videos after recording — even on your own.
Record the screen silently, then in a dedicated box play the video while you narrate over it. The narration lands in a separate file; add background music, balance the volumes (so the music won't drown the voice) and generate the final video with all three sources.
Record silent · Narrate over the video · Music · Volumes · Video + narration + music → final
PREMIUM. The video and narration stay as separate files; only “Generate final” creates the mixed video.
The sound out of a video, without opening an editor.
Any video the preview can open gets a button at the top. Save the audio to a file — MP3, AAC, WMA, WAV, FLAC or ALAC, the lossless ones included — or make a copy of the video without sound. It lands right beside the original, under the same name. The original video is left untouched. No conversion dialog, no second program, and nothing leaves your machine.
A vault is a set of encrypted files on disk — file names, folder names and contents, all of it. Open it with your password and the tree, the preview, the search and the file operations work exactly as they always did, over content decrypted on the fly. Close it, and what is left on the disk is unreadable names and bytes without meaning.
ONE, OR A THOUSAND
Vaults are objects
A vault is a branch like any other — put one on a disk, or a hundred, side by side with ordinary folders. Each carries its own password. A single gesture opens every vault that shares one, whether that is one vault or a thousand, and a single gesture closes them all.
48 WORDS
The only other way in
Each vault makes its own 48 words when it is created — its key, in plain language. The password or those words: nothing else opens a vault. We cannot open it either — lose both and the vault is gone. Keep the words where the vault is not.
A DRIVE LETTER
Open to every app
Give a vault a drive letter and it becomes an ordinary drive for everything on the machine — ffmpeg, Word, WinRAR and the explorer's own recorder write straight into it. Mounting trades secrecy for compatibility, which is why it is never the default.
NO WAITING
Read and play inside
Files are encrypted in blocks, not as a whole. A 4 GB video never has to be decrypted into memory first — the preview opens, and you can jump straight to minute forty. Documents, books and images preview the same way, inside the vault.
VAULT SIZE
As big as its disk
There is no limit of ours. A vault holds a single file, or several TB across thousands of them. It stops where the disk stops.
FILE SIZE
Whatever the disk allows
16 TB on NTFS, 16 EB on exFAT — and 4 GB on FAT32, because that is FAT32's limit and not ours. Encryption adds about 0.09%, so a file that only just fits stops fitting: the check runs against the encrypted size and refuses before starting, with the real number.
NOT OURS TO HOLD
Cryptomator format
The format is Cryptomator's, rebuilt from its public specification, and it works both ways — tested. Vaults made here open in Cryptomator on Android, iOS, Mac and Linux, with nothing to convert. Vaults you already have open here too. If ExplorerFocus went away tomorrow, the files would not.
Protects against
Anyone who copies the folder or the disk — cloud sync, a lost USB stick, a backup in someone else's hands
Anyone who steals the computer while it is switched off
Anyone with read access to the disk, without the password
Does not protect against
Malware running as you with the vault open — it reads decrypted files, like any other program
Keyloggers, or anyone sitting at your unlocked machine with the vault open
Copies of a file that already existed in the clear before it went in
Someone who writes to the disk with the vault closed: they cannot alter your content — the authentication catches that — but they can delete files
Why that second column exists: promising more security than it has is the worst thing a feature like this can do. Every product in this category could publish that list. Almost none of them do.
A side effect worth knowing: every encrypted folder lives at the same shallow depth on disk, so a folder twenty levels deep is still a four-part path. Paths that Windows Explorer refuses to open work inside a vault.
PREMIUM — creating vaults. Opening them is free, including vaults made elsewhere.
§ 03 · Shortcuts
Hands on the home row.
Every important operation has a shortcut. Mouse-free whenever possible — comfort for long sessions.
F2
Rename the focused item — file, folder, or tab
Enter
Open the file with the associated app
Delete
Move to Recycle Bin — via FileOperationsManager
F5
Refresh current folder listing
CtrlF/CtrlL
Focus the local search box
CtrlT
New profile (new tab)
CtrlW
Close current tab
CtrlTab
Next tab — Shift reverses
Ctrl1 ... 9
Jump to the Nth tab
Shift+drag
Force Move without asking
§ 04 · Stack
Built with serious parts.
Each dependency was chosen for maturity, size, or the absence of reasonable alternatives. No framework-of-the-day.
The complete list travels inside the program, with every author and the full licence texts — under About → Third-party licences.
.NET
net10.0-windows
Classic WPF, no WinUI or MAUI. Compatible with Windows 10 and 11.
MVVM
CommunityToolkit.Mvvm
ObservableObject, ObservableProperty, RelayCommand — generated by source generators.
CRYPTO
Bouncy Castle
scrypt, AES-SIV and AES key wrapping, from Bouncy Castle (MIT) — public, and in wide use for over twenty years.
LETTER
Dokany · DokanNet
Dokany (LGPL v3) is not shipped: you install it, and the explorer uses it only if it finds it. The .NET bridge, DokanNet (MIT), does travel inside the executable.
FORMAT
Cryptomator v8 · BIP-39
The vault format is Cryptomator's, rebuilt from its public specification. The recovery key uses the BIP-39 word list (MIT).
PREVIEW
AvalonEdit · Markdig · WebView2
Syntax highlight, markdown renderer, and embedded Edge engine for PDF.
UTIL
Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO
For sending to the Recycle Bin — the only honest way, and it works.
REMOTE
SSH.NET · FluentFTP
SFTP through SSH.NET; FTP and FTPS through FluentFTP. Mature, and boring in the good way.
NO SDK
HttpClient
WebDAV, Dropbox and OneDrive are written by hand against their HTTP APIs. No vendor SDK to age badly.
CAPTURE
NAudio · NTwain
Microphone and system sound through NAudio and WASAPI; the scanner through NTwain, the TWAIN standard.
ARCHIVES
SharpCompress
ZIP, RAR, 7z and TAR read in place, so an archive opens like a folder.
§ 05 · Free and Premium
Everything local is free.
It always has been and always will be: no subscription, no account, no ads. Premium is a one-time donation — a small reward for the nights and days spent building very specific, technically demanding features. I'm not in this for the money: I'm in it for the ideas that come along. Most people will never miss Premium — and that's how it should be.
File operations with real progress, speed, ETA, history and conflicts
Terminals, per-extension app associations, archives as folders
Complete dark theme, 16 languages, auto-updates
Audio recording (microphone)
1 remote connection (SFTP/FTP/FTPS) — browse and preview
Premium
one-time €19.99 donation · per machine
Creating encrypted vaults
Full remote access: multiple connections, all operations, WebDAV, Dropbox, OneDrive
Screen recording with no watermark, no time limit and with sound
Video recording without watermark
Audio mixing microphone + system sound
Multi-page scanning with document feeder (ADF)
Full book reader — EPUB, Kindle formats, FB2 and comics
Intro/end cards and text banner on recordings
How to get it
In the app, click the PREMIUM button (top right).
Enter the email address — the app copies the Machine ID to the clipboard.
PayPal opens: minimum €19.99 donation.
As soon as PayPal confirms the donation, I send the activation key by email.
Paste the key into the app. The licence is tied to that machine.
Note: the key is sent by hand, by me — so it may not be instant. PayPal shows up under LogViewer, the other project from the same house (PayPal only allows one destination per account); the page confirms I'm the author of both.
Got a good idea? If your suggestion makes ExplorerFocus better, I'll give you full Premium access. Write to NunexmBrothers@gmail.com.
🛡️
A warning from Windows? Check which version you have.
ExplorerFocus is digitally signed as of version 1.2.23 (18 August 2026). The signature is recent, so Windows may still ask you to confirm when opening: it takes a while to recognise a new publisher, and it isn't a problem with the file. A copy from before 1.2.23, on the other hand, isn't signed and may stop opening — in that case don't wait for the automatic update, which lives inside the app and can't run either. Download it again from this page.
Open the program
1On the "Windows protected your PC" notice, click More info.
2Click Run anyway.
Pinned it to the taskbar and it won't open?
1Right-click ExplorerFocus.exe → Properties.
2Tick Unblock (at the bottom) → OK, then pin it again.
Verify the file— optional
Only if you want to be absolutely sure you downloaded the official file, unaltered. Pick one of the two methods.
First, find the file: open the Windows File Explorer (the yellow folder on the taskbar, or ⊞ Win + E) and click Downloads on the left — that's where ExplorerFocus.exe lands when you download it. Do this in File Explorer, not in the browser.
Method A — PowerShell
1In the File Explorer window at Downloads, hold Shift and right-click an empty area → Open PowerShell window here.
2Paste this command and press Enter:
Get-FileHash .\ExplorerFocus.exe
3Compare the SHA256 value shown with the one below.
Method B — Command line (cmd)
1In the File Explorer window at Downloads, click the address bar (at the top, where the folder path appears), type cmd and press Enter.
2Paste this command and press Enter:
certutil -hashfile ExplorerFocus.exe SHA256
3Compare the hash line with the one below.
It should match this value (upper/lowercase doesn't matter):
—
✓Match? It's the official file, unaltered.
What is SHA-256?
Think of it as the file's fingerprint. An algorithm reads every byte of ExplorerFocus.exe and boils them down to a 64-character code (letters A–F and digits). That code is the SHA-256.
It has two properties that make it useful:
The same file always produces the same code.
If a single bit changes — a corrupted download, or someone tampering with the file — the code comes out completely different.
So verifying is simple: if the code you compute on your file matches the one published here, you can be sure it's exactly the official file, byte for byte — no corruption, no changes. The code can't be reversed: it's only for comparison and never reveals the contents.
How to confirm
First, find the file: open the Windows File Explorer (the yellow folder on the taskbar, or ⊞ Win + E) and click Downloads on the left — that's where ExplorerFocus.exe lands when you download it. Do this in File Explorer, not in the browser.
Method A — PowerShell
1In the File Explorer window at Downloads, hold Shift and right-click an empty area → Open PowerShell window here.
2Paste this command and press Enter:
Get-FileHash .\ExplorerFocus.exe
3Compare the SHA256 value shown with the one below.
Method B — Command line (cmd)
1In the File Explorer window at Downloads, click the address bar (at the top, where the folder path appears), type cmd and press Enter.
2Paste this command and press Enter:
certutil -hashfile ExplorerFocus.exe SHA256
3Compare the hash line with the one below.
It should match this value (upper/lowercase doesn't matter):
