Swan is a substitute to the Windows File Explorer (WFE hereafter) for those seeking an elegant file management experience. Many features are ported from WFE to make Swan a familiar experience, whilst solving several major frustrations:
- Ergonomic file operations through multiple explorer panes, instead of managing multiple WFE windows
- Instant and intuitive searching, instead of the slow and clumsy WFE search
- Bulk renaming, completely absent from the WFE
In addition, Swan solves many smaller frustrations, as identified in the feature comparison section.
Due to feature immaturity, Swan is not intended to outright replace the WFE as of now. Rather, it's meant to be used as a powerful primary whilst making WFE an easy to reach secondary for when a feature is missing.
| Feature |  |
|
|---|---|---|
| Directory browsing and navigation | ✔ | ✔ |
| Create empty file, directory | ✔ | ✔ |
| Cut-copy-paste file operations | ✔ | ✔ |
| Drag-to-move file operations | ✔ | ✔ |
| Basic directory history foward/back | ✔ | ✔ |
| Rename single object | ✔ | ✔ |
| Pinned directories | ✔ | ✔ |
| Recent files | ✔ | ✔ |
| Multi-pane explorer | ❌ | ✔ |
| Rename objects in bulk | ❌ | ✔ |
| Browsable directory history | ❌ | ✔ |
| Multi-column sort | ❌ | ✔ |
| File operations history | ❌ | ✔ |
| Unix directory separator support | ❌ | ✔ |
| Customizable appearance | ❌ | ✔ |
| Current working directory autocomplete | ✔ | 🛠️ |
| Create shortcut | ✔ | 🛠️ |
| Object attributes | ✔ | 🛠️ |
| Object sharing | ✔ | 🛠️ |
| Object security | ✔ | 🛠️ |