An open-source, Qt6-based multi-pane file manager for Windows and Linux, with powerfull integrated search, grep and file hashing.
www.lvdopen.eu · www.lvdsystems.eu
- Multi-pane, multi-tab browsing — 1, 2 (Commander-style side-by-side,
or stacked), or 4 panes, each with its own tab bar; quick-switch icons
and
Ctrl+1/2/3/4. - Built to outpace Explorer and native desktop file managers on the cases that make them stutter — directory scans, the instant filter, and search all run off the UI thread and stream results in as they're found, so a slow network share or a 100k+-file folder never blocks the window the way Explorer's own listing (or GNOME/KDE's file managers) can. See PERFORMANCE.md for the replicable benchmark suite and measured numbers.
- Session save/restore — window layout, every pane's tabs, sort order, and columns come back on next launch; named sessions via Session → Sessions....
- Instant filter + threaded Finder — per-pane substring/regex filter,
plus a dockable recursive file finder (
Ctrl+F) that streams results as it searches. - Real drag & drop — between panes/tabs and to/from Explorer/Nautilus, routed through a cancelable progress queue with a live dialog.
- Native shell integration (Windows) — the real
IContextMenushell menu, Open Terminal Here, native Properties (incl. combined multi-select properties), all reachable from the app's own context menu. - File ops — batch rename (pattern or find/replace), MD5/SHA-1/SHA-256 checksums, folder compare, new folder, all via the same cancelable job queue as copy/move/delete.
- Custom Actions — define your own "New File" templates and
per-extension "Open With" entries (e.g.
.zip/.7zwith an external 7-Zip) from Tools → Custom Actions...; off by one toggle if you don't want the extra context-menu entries. - Per-pane read-only lock — a checkbox that blocks delete/rename/move in that pane without a separate "are you sure" for every click.
- Light/dark theming and a keyboard shortcut editor — every shortcut in the app is rebindable, with conflict detection.
- Ships two ways — a portable
.zip/Inno Setup installer on Windows, an AppImage on Linux. - GPLv3, no telemetry, no accounts.
Requires Qt 6.5+ (developed against 6.11.1) and CMake 3.23+.
Run from a "x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2022" (or after calling
vcvarsall.bat x64) so cl.exe is on PATH:
cmake --preset windows-msvc
cmake --build --preset windows-msvc
The windows-msvc preset points CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH at
C:/Qt/6.11.1/msvc2022_64 — edit CMakePresets.json (or create a
CMakeUserPresets.json, already git-ignored) if your Qt install lives
elsewhere.
cmake --preset linux
cmake --build --preset linux
Requires a system Qt6 (qt6-base-dev or equivalent) with Widgets on the
CMake package search path. On Debian/Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install cmake ninja-build qt6-base-dev qt6-svg-dev \
qt6-l10n-tools qt6-tools-dev qt6-tools-dev-tools pkg-config
ctest --test-dir build --output-on-failure
Covers the async search engine, the copy/move/delete job queue (including the read-only-lock rejection paths), folder comparison, and the keyboard shortcut registry.
cmake --build build --target perftest --config Release
build/Release/perftest.exe
A replicable QBENCHMARK-based suite (tests/perftest.cpp) covering pane
load, instant filter, filename search, selection, navigation, and
refresh-while-selected timings, modeled on the category breakdown
RoyiFileManager publishes
for its own releases. It's a timing report rather than a pass/fail check,
so it isn't part of ctest — build and run it directly, always against a
Release build. See PERFORMANCE.md for methodology
and results.
bash packaging/linux/build-appimage.sh
Builds Release, downloads linuxdeploy/linuxdeploy-plugin-qt on first
run (cached under packaging/linux/tools/, not vendored), and writes
lvdExplorer-<version>-x86_64.AppImage to dist/. Needs curl,
pkg-config, and file on PATH in addition to the build dependencies
above.
An AppImage is only as portable as the oldest glibc/libstdc++ it was linked against, so the release published on the newest build machine available (glibc 2.39+) won't run on something like Ubuntu 20.04/22.04. A second, older-baseline AppImage is built for that:
bash packaging/linux/build-appimage-legacy-docker.sh
This needs only Docker — it builds inside an actual ubuntu:20.04
container (installing CMake, Qt 6.5.3 via
aqtinstall, and the rest of the
build deps inside it on first run; cached under
~/.cache/lvdexplorer-docker-qt after that) and writes
lvdExplorer-<version>-x86_64-glibc2.31.AppImage to dist/ — named
after the actual glibc version linked against (detected at build time,
not hardcoded) rather than the distro, since glibc compatibility is what
actually determines where it runs and that naming doesn't imply a false
promise about any other distro or version. Covers roughly Ubuntu
20.04+/Debian 11+/Fedora 31+ and similar. The plain
lvdExplorer-<version>-x86_64.AppImage covers the newest distros but
needs glibc 2.39+.
It has to be a genuine Ubuntu 20.04 build environment, not just a
pointer at an older Qt — this one took a real-world failure to learn.
packaging/linux/build-appimage.sh's QT_PREFIX_PATH/OUTPUT_SUFFIX
env vars look like they'd do the same thing by pointing the build at a
downloaded Qt 6.5.3 while still compiling on whatever host is running
the script, and a 0.4.0 release built exactly that way (on a Debian 13
host) did pass local testing. It then failed on a real Ubuntu 22.04
machine with GLIBC_2.38/GLIBC_2.39 "version not found" errors —
newer requirements than Ubuntu 22.04 itself ships, let alone 20.04.
linuxdeploy's Qt plugin only bundles Qt's own libraries; everything an
AppImage normally expects the host to already have (libc, libstdc++,
libsystemd, libicu, libglib, ...) still gets linked from whatever's
actually installed on the machine doing the compiling. Building inside
an actual ubuntu:20.04 container is what makes those link against
Ubuntu 20.04's own versions instead. Confirmed fixed by checking the
rebuilt binary's highest required symbol versions
(objdump -T dist-extracted/usr/bin/lvdExplorer | grep -oE 'GLIBC_[0-9.]+' | sort -V
dropped from 2.39 to 2.14) and by running the result on that same real
Ubuntu 22.04 machine.
bash packaging/linux/build-deb.sh
Writes lvdexplorer_<version>_<arch>.deb to dist/, hand-rolled with
dpkg-deb rather than CPack. Unlike the AppImage, this is a thin
package — it depends on the build machine's own Qt6 and libarchive via
apt (detected from the actual linked binary with ldd + dpkg -S,
not hardcoded package names, since those have changed across Debian/
Ubuntu releases) rather than bundling them, which is the normal shape for
a .deb and keeps it small. That also means a .deb built here only
targets the distro release it was built on (or a close match) — there's
no OUTPUT_SUFFIX/QT_PREFIX_PATH legacy-baseline option the way the
AppImage has one, since "works on an older glibc" isn't something a thin
package can promise. Needs dpkg-deb in addition to the AppImage's build
dependencies (already present on Debian/Ubuntu by default).
Scripts under packaging/windows/ produce distributable builds; both
build Release from scratch, so no separate build step is needed first.
# Self-contained .zip with Qt DLLs bundled (windeployqt) and the
# lvdExplorer.ini marker that switches the app into portable mode:
powershell -File packaging\windows\make-portable-zip.ps1
# Inno Setup installer (requires Inno Setup 7's ISCC.exe):
powershell -File packaging\windows\build-installer.ps1
Both write to dist/. Pass -QtBinDir <path> if your Qt install isn't at
C:\Qt\6.11.1\msvc2022_64\bin, and build-installer.ps1 also takes
-IsccPath <path> if Inno Setup isn't at its default location.
See CONTRIBUTING.md. Participation is covered by the Code of Conduct.
GPLv3 — see LICENSE.