Explore our selection of the best free file managers that can be run directly from a USB drive. These portable apps make it easy to organize, manage, and transfer your files wherever you are!
Linux Reader for Windows is a Linux Ext Reader that allows users to access Linux files from Windows. The software supports reading from Linux Filesystems such as Ext4, Ext3, Ext2. It supports reading from ReiserFS, HFS, HFS+, NTFS, FAT, and exFAT filesystems as well.
Xyplorer is an outstanding free and portable file manager for Windows, initially developed by the Cologne Code Company. Packed with a wide array of features, this alternate file explorer software operates completely standalone, making it an ideal choice for running directly from a USB flash drive without installation.
RED (Remove Empty Directories) is a lightweight, portable, and open-source tool designed for Windows. It helps streamline your file system by locating and erasing unused and vacant folders in bulk. Whether you're organizing your PC, optimizing drive space, or cleaning up after uninstalling software, this utility simplifies the process of getting rid of empty directories with just a few clicks.
Table Text Compare is a free portable text Comparison tool. It can be used to quickly and easily compare two text files line by line. It might be used to compare, find, and list the differences between two text files. The differences are listed in the output window, and comparison reports can be exported and saved into a text file.
Base64 Decoder is a Free and portable decoder tool. It can be used to convert base64 data back to its original source code. This software might also be used to decode attachments found in email files.
AllDup: Reclaim valuable storage space with this free and portable file management tool. If your Windows system is cluttered with redundant files, this duplicate file remover can help you scan, detect, and safely clean them out, quickly and efficiently.
Folder Size is a Portable and Free program created by MindGems. It can be used to scan an attached drive and display how much space each directory is consuming. Disk space consumed by each folder is broken down by percentage and displayed by your choice of either a bar or pie chart.
My Commander (MyCO), is a lightweight, small, and portable file manager for Windows. Despite its tiny size, it packs a surprising number of features that make file management faster and more efficient. It can be used to quickly access folders and files, create or extract ISO and Zip archives, and perform common operations such as moving, copying, renaming, or deleting files and folders. You can even map folders to drive letters for easier navigation.
MyCO also includes a built-in file hex viewer, drag-and-drop support, and a simple file search capability, making it a useful tool for both casual and power users. The best part—it’s completely free and doesn’t require installation, so you can run it from a USB flash drive wherever you go.
File Renamer is a free portable file renaming software. As its name suggests, it is a file renaming tool or app that can be used to rename multiple files simultaneously. Several multiple file renaming options are available; number files, find and replace words, numbers, or characters in files, add characters to the file names, and more.
UltraFileSearch is yet another free file search utility. It can be used to quickly find text, files, or folders within any drive or search across multiple drives at once. It supports wildcards and file masks, and the results can be ordered and exported in many different formats.
Duplicate Music Files Finder is a Free tool created by Lancuta Liviu Timotei. It can be used to detect and remove duplicate MP3, Wav, WMA files. The first music file found is listed in the left pane, duplicates found are listed in the right pane. Check boxes and Check All buttons exist on each side, making it easy to find and delete your duplicate music files all at once.
Easy Duplicate File Finder is a Free File Finder that as the name suggests, can be used to Find Duplicate Files. Very useful for finding and deleting or removing Duplicate Mp3 Song Files. It works by finding only exact duplicates of the file type you set by file mask. A minimum file size can also be set, and multiple drives or folder paths can all be checked at once.
SpaceMonger is a lightweight and portable disk space analyzer developed by Sixty-Five Software Inc. It helps users visualize how their hard drive space is being used, making it easier to locate and delete large or unnecessary files. The tool presents your storage layout as an interactive treemap; boxes represent files and folders, and the bigger the box, the more space it's consuming.
UltraSearch is a free fast file search tool for Windows. It was originally created by JAM Software. This portable ultra fast search utility can be used to quickly find for files or folders on NTFS partitioned drives.
File Bucket is a lightweight, portable file copying and file cloning utility for Windows created by Skwire Empire. Designed for simplicity and control, it allows users to collect files and folders from multiple locations and copy or move them into a single destination directory. This makes it especially useful for building organized archives of music, photos, videos, or documents without manually navigating back and forth between folders.
Unlike traditional file copiers, File Bucket lets you stage your selections first, review everything in one place, and then commit the operation only when you are ready.
CloneSpy is a freeware duplicate file removing tool that can be used to find and remove duplicate files, clean your computer of unnecessary clutter, and free up drive space. This tool can detect and list files that are either exact duplicates, have same file name, have same size, or are zero bytes long.
Advanced Renamer: Batch File and Folder Renaming Tool (Freeware & Portable) is a powerful freeware utility developed by Kim Jensen. Designed for Windows operating systems, this portable software allows users to batch rename multiple files and folders simultaneously, making it ideal for anyone needing to manage and organize large file collections efficiently.
FastCopy is a lightweight, free file copying and synchronization utility for Windows designed for extremely high performance. It is widely known for delivering faster transfer speeds than the default Windows copy mechanism, especially when handling large files, deep directory structures, or bulk file operations. FastCopy is portable, resource efficient, and well suited for advanced users who need fine grained control over file transfers.
DriveSort is a free portable file sorting application. It can be used to present the contents of a drive or directory by filesize; largest files first or by date; newest files first.
Rename Master is a Portable and Free Multiple File Renaming Tool. Created by JoeJoeSoft, Rename Master can rename multiple files (Batch Rename many files) within seconds. Features include the ability to replace, append or remove parts of the filename of all selected files. In addition advanced features allow for MP3 tag, JPEG JFIF and EXIF tag renaming.
Dirhtml is a Free Portable App that can be used to create a web navigational index file (index.html) of all the files in a folder and it's subfolder tree. This index.html generator is a great asset for those looking to sort and present a directory of files for web navigation and sharing purposes. File names, file types, and output html name and title can be specified.
Alt Commander is a Portable and Free File Manager for Windows. This Freeware File Manager could be used as a replacement Windows File Manager. It offers a clean interface and comes loaded with practical tools for advanced file handling.
Key features include a dual-pane explorer for efficient file navigation, an internal ZIP tool, built-in image viewer, integrated FTP client, file comparison utility, multi-rename tool, and support for browsing inside archive files. With so many features packed into a lightweight package, Alt Commander stands out as a solid alternative to the default Windows File Explorer.
NexusFile is a Portable File Manager for Windows (Replacement Windows File Manager). Developed by JungHoon Noh (xiles), NexusFile can be used to explore and manage your files quickly. A few features include Batch Rename, Dual Panes, Unicode, FTP Client, Archives, Skin, Join/Split, Shred Files, Disk Cleanup, Compare Folders, Smart Address Bar, Tabs, Multi-Language support.
File Splitter is a free file splitting and file joiner tool. Much Like HJSplit, this tool can be used to split big files up into multiple file chunks and to merge those split chunks back into a singular file. This allows a user to send smaller pieces of a large file to recipients in portions that are small enough to send via email or other methods that restrict file size.
File Joiner is a lightweight and free file joining utility designed to reassemble split files into a single, usable output file. This tool is especially useful when dealing with files that have been divided into parts with extensions such as .001, .002, .003, etc. These split files are often the result of using a file splitter program to break large files into smaller segments for easier distribution or storage.
IndexYourFiles is a lightening fast Portable File Indexer and File Search Tool. It can be used to search through all of the files and folders on your Windows PC. Additionally, local and network drive indexing and search is supported.
SpaceSniffer is a Free Portable App that can be used to Find Lost Disk Space. It works by displaying a layered disk map that shows how much space files, folders and programs are taking up on the select drive. You can then use this information to determine which programs are taking up the most disk space. The information is processed and displayed in real time.
Explore2fs is a Linux File Explorer offered by chrysocome that can be used to access Ext2 and Ext3 filesystems while running in Windows. It features drag and drop functionality, and can even access Ext2, Ext3 images (.img files) as well as Ext2 and Ext3 local partitions and external USB partitions. Now you can read those files on your Linux System while your still running in Windows.
ExtremeCopy is a Portable and Free Fast File Copy Utility. This File Copy Tool can be used to copy and move files and folders quickly. ExtremeCopy works by auto optimizing it's speed and resources used based on the abilities of the target machine. The files are then transferred, copied or moved at the fastest possible speed. The copy or transfer of large files and folder structures can see an increase of up to 120% in speed as opposed to just copying via the built in Windows copy tool.
DropIt is a Free and Portable Drag and Drop File Organizer. This drag and drop file organizing utility consist of a drop target that sits on your desktop. As you drop files onto the target, the files are sorted by file type and placed into the destination folder of choice. Destination folders can be set for each file association type and for folders if the active association for folders feature is enabled.
ozSync is a Free and Portable File Synchronization Tool. The utility can be used to synchronize files and folders that reside at different locations and create a backup of the changes. The tool features include pre scheduled, manual and triggered synchronization (live synchronization when file content changes), complete or incremental file backup capabilities are offered with the ability to automatically store replaced or changed files in a separate backup folder.
TeraCopy is a lightweight and portable utility designed to enable fast file transfers on Windows. This tool speeds up file copying and moving tasks by using asynchronous transfer methods and dynamically adjusted buffers that help reduce seek time. Ideal for copying large files between local drives or external devices like USB flash drives, this file copier offers a significant performance boost over the default Windows copy feature.
ArcConvert is a Free Archive Conversion Tool that can be used to Convert any Compressed File or Convert Archives into different compression formats. If you have you ever needed to convert a RAR file to ZIP, ZIP to RAR, ISO to ZIP, RPM to ZIP etc, this tool can do it. This Archive Conversion Tool is very easy to use and is a Stand Alone Portable Application, requiring no installation to your PC.
Bulk File Rename Utility is a powerful and free portable bulk file renamer for Windows. It allows users to rename multiple files and folders at once using an extensive range of flexible and highly customizable rules. From simple text replacement to advanced metadata based renaming, this tool is designed for anyone who needs precise control over file names.
Unlike basic renaming tools, Bulk Rename Utility supports case conversion, numbering, extension changes, MP3 ID tag renaming, EXIF metadata extraction, and complex pattern matching. Whether you are organizing photos, music collections, documents, or large datasets, it provides professional grade renaming capabilities in a portable package.
OpenedFilesView is a free portable utility that enables users to view, manage and delete locked files. OpenedFilesView is particularly helpful when attempting to delete, open or move a file and you get the following error messages: Cannot delete [filename]: There has been a sharing violation. The source or destination file may be in use. Cannot delete [filename]: It is being used by another person or program. Close any programs that might be using the file and try again.
Snowbird 7 is a Free Portable File Manager and Windows Search Tool. The tool is simple to use and enables a user to navigate and manage the file structure of local drives or network drives. Snowbird can handle large folders without degrading system performance. Copy, move or delete files quickly with the ability to pause transfers and to skip errors. Find files using the integrated seach tool (even find text within files) without indexing.
Everything file search tool for Windows is search engine software created and offered by Voidtools. Worlds faster than any built in Windows file searching tool, the everything search engine makes it quick and easy to locate any file or folder by name.
ReNamer is a free file rename tool that can be stored and run from a USB device. Like many other file renaming utilities provides users with the ability to rename prefixes, suffixes, change case, string replacements, change file extensions and much more. Advanced users can even program their own renaming rules. A variety of meta tags, I.E: ID3v1, ID3v2, EXIF, OLE, AVI, MD5, CRC32, and SHA1 are also supported.
Explorer++ is a Free Portable Explorer that can be installed to an run directly from a USB device. The Windows Explorer clone features many additional enhancements such as multi tabbed browsing, thumb preview of images as they are selected, drag and drop support, file merging or splitting and more. Settings can be saved to a local config.xml file instead of the registry, making the application entirely portable.
Ken Rename is a powerful and Free File Rename utility that can be stored and run from a USB device, making it a completely portable file renaming tool. This lightweight batch renamer enables users to quickly and easily rename files in bulk, saving time when managing large collections of documents, photos, videos, or music files.
LAN Search Pro is a free Portable File Search tool that enables users to quickly search for specific file names or file types across an entire LAN (local area network). Once files have been found, the user can open and view, move, copy or rename the items.
Free Commander is a Free Portable File Manager for USB. Proclaimed as an excellent alternative to the windows file manager, it is easy to use and get accustomed to. This portable usb file management tool ships with many useful features such as dual panels for comparing or moving files with ease, a built in viewer that supports viewing files in binary, hex, image or format.