Commander One PRO: FTP client App Reviews

This reminds me a lot of Norton Commander and some of the older file management utilities in the DOS days. They really were quite useful. And so is this, overall. I think there’s an opportunity to do one better on spotlight and native searching by adding some simple-to-use, dialog-box driven search and filter criteria. Hopefully we’ll continue to see improvements as the program matures.

This app is really great for moving files around and managing things on my computer. I like that it takes design cues from the old blue and white color scheme and it is easy to use

How long I was looking for an application that facilitates the reading and manipulating compressed files. Found it! I recommend this app is great!

This is an app to use if you are organizing your files. The tabbed viewing with different view possibilities is great. With access to cloud based files in a dual screen window, you can easily move things where they need to go. Integration with Drive, Dropbox, Amazon, and OneDrive is very helpful. If I create another website, the FTP potential is nice to have. Really enjoying Commander One Pro.

this is the best app ever that i’ve downloaded,it’s the most useful file management app on Mac ever ! I love it !!

I’ve been a fan of dual-pane file managers since first using X Tree on MS-DOS in the 1980s. I still used the command line for other purposes, but for file management I got addicted to tools like X Tree. From there I used Norton Commander and, when I moved to Linux, Midnight Express. I sometimes use a port of Midnight Express in Mac terminal. I’ve looked for the equivalent on Mac OS X and have tried several, but the one I may like best is Commander One. The interface is very reminiscent of my old favorite file managers. Like them, it’s fast and easy to use either from the keyboard (choice of drop-down menus or function keys; I prefer the latter) or, if you must, the mouse. I really can’t think of any file management task that Commander One cannot do. Most of my tasks are local, but Commander One appears to have excellent support for network-based tasks, as well. While I’m not necessarily mouse-a-phobic, I do find that basic file management functions like copying or moving is far more problematic via drag-and-drop. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to drag a group of files from one location to another in either Finder or some other Mac OS X file managers but have, instead, ended up merely extending the selection group. I think I’m pretty adept with using a mouse, but I can’t seem to master dragging groups of files from one location to another. It’s so nice in Commander One simply to select and hit F5 to copy as many files as I like from the right pane to the left pane. Here’s one tip that may help you: I at first thought that the devs had neglected to include a swap pane function. I expected to find it on the View menu, which is where other dual-pane file managers generally put it. Instead, though, it’s on the Command menu, called “source<>target (Swap)”. Similarly, what is often called Clone Pane on the View menu of other file managers is on the Command menu labeled “target=source (Equalize)”. The only function missing from the App Store version on Commander One PRO is the ability to eject a USB flash drive. The option is apparently curtailed by Apple’s Sandbox restrictions. The version available directly from the developer on their website does support this function, however. In short, you won’t be disappointed with Commander One if you like a classic, dual-pane file manager that is fast and reliable.

Very stable and light on system resources.

This is the best OS X Finder alternative, but is still missing essential Finder functionality. Currently it is not possible with Commander One PRO to launch a terminal of your choice (Terminal or iTerm or anything) in a particular directory, so if you are used to doing this with an added button in Finder, you must give this up if transitioning to Commander One PRO. So if you are a hard-core text shell user, Commander One PRO may not yet be a satisfactory alternative for you. If you have a 12-inch MacBook with large text scaling, the entire app will not fit on your screen because of a large, arbitrary minum app height. It would be very helpful if the creators would let the user select the bottom six buttons on the screen, or add shortcuts to the “drives” bar on top.

Would be perfect if this App supports the BackBlaze B2 cloud storage connection.

Very pleased to see this. Please continue developing ;-) . Devs seem responsive: I asked for alternate line shading in the browser….and it appeared in an update! It’d be nice to have a plug in architecture like TotalCommander. TC has been in development for so long it has most features I could possibly dream of. Wonder what the Commander One development plan looks like?? I wish this were available the first 6 or 8 years after I switched to Macs! I was in total TotalCommander withdrawal (except for use in a VM). So I learned to use finder & pathfinder and don’t use CommanderOnePro as my only finder. But CommanderOne is solid and great! E.g. the archive features (different compress engines builtin, plus ability to view archive as a directory-without dearchiving) are better than most other mac file managers. And the design with the option of old fashioned function keys for copy/move remains more reliable than drag/drop for critical file management tasks. Plus this’ll give me directory sizes for internal or external drives instantly—unlike other finders which often churn away or fail to update.

suspect it is incompatible with parallels. froze everything solid on startup. had to reboot, then drive wouldn’t mount, had to reformat drive and reinstall over the last five days. So, nuts to you, Commander ONE. You’re over and done.

I bought Commander One Pro (current version - v1.5.1 2031) as a replacement for TotalFinder but it is very unstable on OS X 10.11 on a 2015 Mac Mini. It crashes eventually, everyday, and freezes every other open app while it crashes. Even “force quit” takes five minutes to force it to quit - in most cases the crash is so hard a forced reboot is required. When its not crashing, its great, but the threat of a crash and loss of work makes it too risky to keep using in its current condition.

It has slightly better options than Finder, but WHY, WHY WHY do I need to have dual panes AT ALL TIMES?

Given that this app has been written in Swift, I am disappointed to see that VoiceOver isn’t well supported. The interface isn’t intuitive to me as a blind user. Would be great if something could be done about this in the next release, as the features sound very promising! I will update my review accordingly.

I wanted to compare the two, figured on sale was a good time to do so. Forklift is infinitely better. It’s so much more polished, while this one is terribly rough around the edges. The themes only affect the content, not any of the toolbar areas, I have not found a way to go single-pane, and there’s just so much going on in the toolbar. I know you can get rid of most of it, but you can’t even get rid of the ugly tab bar, which is ALWAYS active even with only one tab open per pane.

This Mac application was essential for me to easely keep my files organized. Its a simple yet very powerful application in which I can see all my files and easily move them from folder the folder. I give it five stars all day long.

I was using Norton Commander a long time ago and still missing two panels view with Finder. ForkLift gave me this option few years ago. Now there is an alternative with Commander Pro. It has some good features, like using function keys without necessity of pressing Fn or changing the preferences, but lack some advanced features of FL despite the PRO name. So I think 2$ price tag is more adequate for now. Since it is relatively new app I will wait to see the next updates after drawing final concussions. So I start with 3 stars credit.

Very useful app that helps you to manage all your files and folders on your Mac. This app has also some other great features such as ftp manager, zip extractor and many more. I like the interface and nice design. One of the must have app for efficient work. Worth it.

I gave 5 stars just to encaurage further development of the app. I need it. Even though, forklift is a great and polished app, something is missing. Never was comfortable using it. I can’t wait to see what these guys can do.

Back in the mid-late 80s, when I was working only in DOS, Norton Commander was my workhorse. The first piece of software I installed wherever I went. It was THE file manager to have and it did an utterly brilliant job. Since the advent of OS GUIs, nothing has ever come close to being such an essential piece of software as Norton Commander… until now. Commander One PRO is an excellent file manager in the tradition of NC - it even has the old white on blue color scheme. It doesn’t feel quite as natural yet, but some of that is probably down to a learning curve and just getting used to a keyboard-based file manager again after so many years with the mouse/trackpad. COPRO has a few niggles and quirks, but I’m really hoping the developer will work to eveolve this software so that it becomes as an essential part of OS X as NC was for me on DOS.