Windows Explorer is a very basic file manager. But thankfully, it is very flexible too and supports plugins. The good news is there are plenty of plugins and extensions available for explorer that enhances or extends the functionality of explorer greatly. All of these plugins integrate itself either with the Windows shell or with the explorer toolbar, so that you don't have to run them as seperate programs. I have been writing about these plugins in this blog as I have kept discovering them. Here is round up some of the best explorer plugins available, some of which I have already covered in my earlier posts.


1. Explorer Breadcrumbs

Explorer Breadcrumbs brings Windows Vista's new way of navigating folders to Windows XP. allows you to quickly see and navigate through the entire folder hierarchy without leaving the current window. It saves precious time navigating through folders and files. Besides it changes appearance along with Windows themes, blending perfectly with explorer. Explorer Breadcrumbs also acts as the address bar. When you click on any empty space in the bar, the breadcrumbs changes into an address bar. So you can completely do away with the default address bar of Windows Explorer.


2. iColorFolder

With iColorFolder, you can give colors to WindowsXP folders. It's an easy way to label your important folders so that you don't have to hunt for them among a bunch a yellow folders. Read More





3. FileBox eXtender

FileBox enhances Windows by adding several advanced functions to the standard Open File and Save File dialog boxes. FileBox adds two handy buttons to these standard dialogs. These appear on the right side of the Windows dialog box title bars. These buttons appear next to the minimize, restore, and maximize buttons. FileBox eXtender has a nifty option to display these buttons on Windows Explorer folders too, and this can greatly speed up navigation through today's huge hard disks. Read More


4. Piky Basket

Piky Basket is a software that can reduce repetitive tasks when copying/moving files and folders in Windows. Piky Basket allows you to select files/folders in to a "basket" from different locations. Once you are done selecting, you can paste them all at once to the target folders. It also allows you to selectively paste the files to the target folder. Read More



5. ThumbView

ThumbView is an open source application that enables image thumbnails support in Windows Explorer for filetypes that are not natively supported by Windows. Windows supports thumbnail view of only a handful of image file formats like JPEG, BMP, GIF and some others. ThumbView will add support to a total of 19 image types - directly inside any Explorer window! Read More


6. DMEXBar

DMEXBar is a free Windows explorer extension that brings dual-pane to any explorer window. Apart from that it adds a bunch of other useful features like arrange explorer windows side by side, rename multiple files at once, quick change to favorite folders, quick create directory, split files, calculate directory size and some more.


7. QTTabBar

QTTabBar is an Add-In that gives Tab Browsing Feature to your Explorer. If you love tabbed browsing in your internet browser, then you will probably love this one too. Now no more cluttering of the task bar.


8. DM2

DM2 is an open source application that packs several Windows enhancement features together that can help you greatly in your every-day work. DM2 packs so much features within it that's impossible to describe it in a few lines. I suggest you read this.




9. TeraCopy

TeraCopy is a compact program designed to copy and move files at the maximum possible speed, providing the user a lot of features. It uses dynamically adjusted buffers to reduce seek times. Asynchronous copy speeds up file transfer between two physical hard drives. It even supports pause and resume. TeraCopy is an excellent tool for copying corrupted files. It will try several times and in the worse case just skips the file, not terminating the entire transfer. TeraCopy integrates with the Windows shell and can completely replace Explorer copy and move functions.



10. AudioShell

AudioShell is a freeware MS Windows Explorer shell extension plug-in which allows you to view and edit music tags directly in Windows Explorer. AudioShell adds ID3 tag editor and viewer tabs to the music files properties menu (you can edit ID3 tags file by file or in groups); detailed music files hints with tag and file information; and additional columns in the Explorer files list.