Meet Commander One — a powerful dual-pane file manager that makes it easy to manage, organize, and transfer files on your Mac. It lets you easily browse and work with local files and folders, connect to remote servers via FTP, SFTP, or WebDAV, and access files stored in cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, and OneDrive — all in one place.
Commander One is more than just a file manager — it’s a complete solution for secure, efficient file management across all your storage locations.
Getting Started
Requirements
Commander One requires macOS 10.13 and later.
Installation
You can download Commander One either from the Mac App Store or directly from our official website. Please note that the Mac App Store version has some limitations compared to the PRO version offered on our site. For a detailed comparison, please refer to the chart provided in our user guide link.
Launching Commander One
When you open Commander One for the first time, you’ll see a window asking you to select a folder and grant the app full permissions.
After that, Commander One will request Full Disk Access. Follow the on-screen instructions to enable it. This permission is essential – without it, Commander One won’t be able to access key locations on your Mac, such as Desktop, Downloads, and Documents.
Registration
After granting the required permissions and launching Commander One, you’ll be given the option to activate the PRO Pack or continue in Free Mode.
Free Mode
You can use Commander One for free. The free version includes essential features such as dual-pane browsing, basic file operations, and ZIP archive support. It’s easy to use and great for everyday file management on your Mac.
To continue without a license key, just click the “Continue in Free Mode” button.
Purchasing a License
To unlock all PRO features of Commander One, you’ll need to purchase and activate a license key.
You can activate PRO Pack using one of the following options:
Click “Buy Now” when launching Commander One.
Select “Activate New License” from the Commander One menu.
After purchasing a license, you’ll receive an activation code by email. Enter the code in the activation window and click “Activate.”
Be sure to enter the license key exactly as shown in your confirmation email.
Commander One will activate instantly – no need to restart your Mac or relaunch the app
Licensing
Commander One is sold as a one-time payment. Once you purchase the software, you can use it as long as you have the installer and the activation code.
Commander One offers two types of licenses to suit different user needs:
Personal License is for individual, non-commercial use and allows installation on a single Mac only.
Team License allows commercial use and is designed for businesses and teams who need to use the software across multiple users in a professional environment.
After activating Commander One with your license key, you can check your license status by going to Commander One > About Commander One in the app’s menu.
Graphical User Interface
Commander One features a dual-pane interface that simplifies file management on Mac. Each pane operates independently, making it easy to drag and drop files between folders. The interface supports tabbed browsing, customizable hotkeys, and themes, allowing you to personalize your workspace.
With built-in process viewer, archive management, and a terminal emulator, Commander One brings powerful tools together in one intuitive window.
Key Elements
1. Toolbar: The toolbar provides quick access to essential tools:
Show Hidden Files – Toggle visibility of hidden items.
Get Info – View detailed information about a selected file or folder.
Quick Look – Preview files without opening them.
Search – Quickly locate files and folders.
Archive – Compress or extract ZIP files.
Connections Manager – Handle remote and cloud connections.
Operations Queue – Monitor ongoing file operations like copy or move.
You can also switch between different file views: list, column, or icon.
2. Navigation bar: Located just below the toolbar, the navigation bar shows your current location in the file system. It also includes a Process Viewer and displays available disk space.
3. Path bar: The path bar displays the full path to the folder you’re currently viewing. It allows for quick navigation to parent directories, making file browsing faster and easier.
4. Dual-pane layout: In the center of the window, you’ll see two side-by-side panes. Each works independently, making it easy to manage and transfer files between locations.
5. Command-line: In the lower section, you can access a command line to run terminal commands without leaving the app.
Note:
The terminal is available only in PRO Pack mode.
6. Shortcut bar – At the bottom of the Commander One interface, there is a row of shortcut buttons that let you perform common file actions quickly.
7. File statistics bar – Just above the command bar, this area shows information about selected items, including size, number of files and folders in the current directory.
General tab
The General tab lets you adjust how files are viewed and edited, select your preferred language, and customize application settings. Read more
View
The View tab in Commander One controls how files and folders are displayed. You can adjust size formats, show or hide tabs, organize folders, display thumbnails, and change how file names and columns appear to suit your viewing preferences. Read more
Hotkeys
Here you can view the list of default hotkeys in Commander One and assign your own custom shortcuts for specific actions to speed up your workflow.
Appearance
Commander One offers different color themes so you can change how it looks. You can pick a ready-made theme or create your own for a style that fits you. Whether you like light, dark, or bright colors, themes help you make the app look the way you want and make working with it more comfortable. Read more
Advanced
Here, you can choose which items to save when exiting Commander One. You can also enable confirmation prompts for actions like deleting empty folders, changing file extensions, or dragging and dropping files.
Encryption
With the help of Commander One, you can encrypt your personal data stored on any of your online connections, protecting it from any unwanted access. When this feature is enabled, Commander One uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) with a 256-bit key length to translate data into a different form, so that only people who know the password (decryption key) can read and manage it.
Encryption is rather useful if you do not want any third parties to obtain access to your private info, in case they somehow obtain control of one of your machines, where the login credentials to the cloud storage were saved, for instance. Your personal files will be represented as a confusing gibberish, making them completely protected.
Note:
Google Documents are skipped during Google Drive encryption.
How to encrypt a directory
1. Navigate to the folder and select the “Encrypt” option from the context menu.
Note:
Individual files cannot be encrypted.
2. Indicate a password and verify it. We also highly recommend setting a password hint to be able to recover it in the future.
Note:
Commander One doesn’t store any of your passwords. In case you lose/forget your password, it can’t be recovered. Your data will be irretrievably encrypted. Please, make sure you do not lose/forget it.
Tick the optional boxes, if you would like to add the password to the Keychain, additionally encrypt the names of the files or encrypt just newly added files.
To mask the encrypted files on your local machine, you will need to lock the encrypted directory by using the “Lock” context menu. You will be able to unravel these files later by using the “Unlock” option from the same context menu.
When the encryption is no longer needed, and you would like to decipher the directory, simply select the “Decrypt” option from the context menu, enter the password and confirm your actions.
Connecting to remote servers and services
Commander One is the central hub for managing your connections to remote servers and cloud services. It supports a wide range of protocols and platforms, including:
FTP
SFTP
WebDAV
Dropbox
Google Drive
Amazon S3
OneDrive
OpenStack Object Storage
BackBlaze B2
BOX.COM
Mega
pCloud
You can connect to remote locations using the Connections Manager. To open it, click the icon on the toolbar, go to Window → Connections Manager in the menu, or press Command + F on your keyboard.
How to connect to an FTP/SFTP server
1. Choose the connection method (depending on the capabilities of the server you are connecting to):
2. Choose the connection name.
3. Specify the server’s address and the port it is listening on. The default port for plain FTP and FTP with TLS/SSL is 21, for FTP with Implicit SSL – 990, for SFTP – 22.
4. Enter your login and password. If you don’t have an account on the server, check Anonymous login.
Note:
If you specify a password, it will be stored in the Keychain and not asked again. If you leave the field blank, and a password is required by the server, it will be prompted on every connect.
6. Choose the connection mode – active or passive.
7. Set the remote path. This is the directory on the server that will hold the files you upload. If you leave this field blank, the files will be uploaded to the default directory your FTP account logs into.
8. Click Connect.
How to connect to cloud services
To connect to cloud service providers, follow these steps. This guide uses Amazon S3 as an example to walk you through the process.
1. Open Connections Manager, select Amazon S3.
2. Choose the connection name.
3. Enter your access key ID and secret access key in the respective fields.
4. Enter Server endpoint. Server Endpoint allows getting access to S3 compatible cloud storages like Wasabi, S3For.Me, Hyperstore, Minio, etc. To connect to such services you need to enter the access key ID and secret access key for that service in the corresponding fields, as well as to specify the URL address in the Server endpoint box.
Note:
By default, it is the Amazon server endpoint.
Use path-style URLs to access buckets – allows choosing which addressing model to use when connecting: path-style or virtual-hosted style.
Note:
Available for non-Amazon servers only. Amazon S3 always uses a virtual-hosted style addressing model.
5. IAM Settings – configure AWS Identity and Access Management to securely control access to AWS resources, namely who is signed in and has permissions to use resources.
STS Endpoint – choose the Security Token Service endpoint from the drop-down menu.
Role – specify the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the role.
MFA Device – specify the identification number of the MFA device.
External ID – specify the unique identifier that might be required when you assume a role in another account.
6. Specify the bucket name, or use the / (slash) character to indicate the root directory, in which case all your buckets will be listed as folders. The region where the bucket resides is detected automatically.
File Management
Commander One makes file management easy thanks to its dual-pane layout and powerful set of features. In this section, we’ll cover file management actions to help you get started.
Add Directory to Favorites
Commander One allows you to quickly access folders by adding them to your favorites list. To add the current folder, click the Favorites icon on the toolbar and select Add to Favorites.
Compress files
Built-in packer in Commander One offers several options for working with various archive formats:
Extract, create and modify – here you can open, create, and fully manage archives. You can copy, move, delete, edit files, search, browse, and create new folders directly within the archive. Supported formats include:
Read-only – you can extract and browse the contents of the archive, but not create or modify it. Supported formats include:
.rar, .xip, .xar, .iso, .ca
Note:
The free version of Commander One supports only .zip format (extract, create, modify). All other formats are available in the PRO Pack mode.
Copy files
To copy files, do the following:
Set the source folder (directory) in one pane, and the target one in the other.
Select the files you want to copy with the mouse.
Press F5 or choose the Copy option from the menu (File):
4. Click OK. The file will now be copied.
Create New File
To create a new file, go to the main menu and select File → New File. Enter a name and click OK. A new file will be created.
Delete Files
To delete a file:
1. Select the file you want to delete.
2. Choose the “Delete selected file(s)” option from the right-click menu or click F8. Alternatively, you can use the “Delete” menu option.
If the “Move to trash” option is enabled in Preferences, files are moved to the Trash folder of your Mac, instead of deleting them forever. The “Move to trash” option is enabled by default.
If the “Move to trash” option is disabled, files are deleted forever (permanently).
If you click shift+Del, files will be deleted permanently (not in Trash).
Edit Files
To edit the selected file, press F4 or choose File → Edit in the menu. By default, the file will open in TextEdit (this can be changed in Preferences).
Extract Files
Commander One works with the following archive types: .zip, .ipa, .apk, .jar, .ear and .war. PRO Pack additionally allows opening .rar and .iso archives as well as compressing/extracting, browsing and searching tar (.tbz, .tgz, .tlz, .txz, .tz) and .7zip archives.
You can copy/move files from one archive to another as well as delete files and create folders directly inside an archive.
To extract an archive to the current directory, right-click it and select Extract archive.
Go to Folder
To go to the definite local folder, first go to the main menu –> Go and choose the “Go to Folder” option:
In the invoked window enter the path to the local folder and press Enter. The required folder will open in the current pane of Commander One.
Make Symlink. Make Alias
A symbolic link is a file pointing to another file.
For example, you can create a symbolic link in your home directory that points to a directory on your external drive.
To make a symlink, go to the main menu: File –> Make Symlink:
By pressing ⌥⌘L on the keyboard you can create an alias:
An alias is a small file that represents another object in a file system (e.g. remote system) and provides a dynamic link to it. The target object may be moved or renamed, and the alias will still link to it.
Operations Queue
Operations queue lets you continue working with Commander One while files are being copied or moved in the background.
To add a file to a queue, choose the Copy option from the menu –> File (or press F5). Then click the Queue button (or press F2).
You can also queue a file operation after it has already started.
Rename Files
Select the file you want to rename. Then choose “Rename” from the context menu or go to File –> Rename.
Search for Specific Files & Content
Use enhanced search option not only across multiple local drives and archives, but even on FTP servers.
To search for specific files, click the “Search file” toolbar button. Tune the filters:
RegEx – Regular Expressions find patterns in text.
Case sensitive – Allows searching for words that differ in meaning based on usage of uppercase and lowercase letters. Matching case can significantly improve the search results.
Depth – Allows limiting search depth to a current directory or to a certain level.
Search in archives – Allows searching in all archives.
Find text – Allows searching for text contained in the files.
Whole words – Search for whole words only.
Unicode/Hex/UTF8/ANSI – Search for text in Unicode/Hex/UTF8/ANSI files only.
You can either go to a search result with the “Go to File” button, or work with the whole file list by clicking “Feed to Active Panel”:
You can also use Spotlight engine to search for files. Spotlight is a search feature of Mac OS. Spotlight searches through local drives only.
Go to Command –> Search in Spotlight:
A text field will be invoked, where a search query can be entered. Search results will be immediately listed. You can either go to a search result with the “Go to File” button, or work with the whole file list by clicking “Feed to Active Panel”.
Show Hidden Files
Hidden files are not shown by default, but you can enable them by clicking the respective button on the toolbar or using the Show Hidden Files option in the menu.
View File
Commander One’s built-in file viewer is available via F3 and is designed for viewing files in different formats, be they regular files, files inside archives, in your Dropbox or on an FTP server.
You can choose between the following viewing modes:
binary – shows the contents of the file as ASCII characters;
media – is suitable for media files (audio, video, images) and is identical to preview via QuickLook;
HTML – for viewing html code;
text – for viewing plain text files (the character encoding can be specified);
Hex – displays the contents of the file byte-by-byte in hexadecimal format (with ASCII representation being available in the right-hand column);
image – for image files.
Tip:
The image mode detects the image format by the file contents and is particularly useful for viewing images that have an incorrect or no file extension.
In the text and binary modes you can also search the file by pressing Option+F7.
View File Info
To view file info, click the Get info toolbar button, or the Command+i hotkeys. You will get the profound file info, such as size, creation date, sharing and permission rights, etc.
If you select the folder and click the Get info toolbar button, you will get the size of the folder and of all its contents. Note, that counting and displaying the folder size may take some time, depending on the folder size.
Note:
If you click Alt+Command+i, you will invoke the File Info of Finder.
View Folder Size
To view the folder size, go to the main menu (File –> Folder size) or press the space bar.
You can view the folder size even inside archives, DropBox or on an FTP server!
The option works only for folders, not for bundles. The size of bundles is counted automatically in the background. For example, if you go to the Applications folder, it will take some time to count and display the size of each bundle. If you leave the folder, the counting of the size will stop, and this value will be saved until you restart the program.
Showing folder size works in Full View mode only:
To view the size of the folder and of all its contents, you can also click the Get info toolbar button (or the Command+i hotkeys).
Work with Bundles
To open the bundle to see its contents, click Alt + Enter.
To launch the application, click Enter.
The size of bundles is counted automatically in the background. For example, if you go to the Applications folder, it will take some time to count and display the size of each bundle. If you leave the folder, the counting of the size will stop, and this value will be saved until you restart the program.
Tools
Process Viewer
Internal Process Viewer lets you view the processes that are running currently in the system. You can view additional information or kill any process (in PRO Pack mode). System process can be killed as well, in case root mode is enabled (Command –> Restart as root).
Here are the values of the columns of the Process Viewer, when Commander One is in full mode (View –> Full):
name – the process name
ext – PID of the process
size – used memory
date – the date and the time of launch
kind – the user who launched the process. In case the “Show Hidden Files” option is enabled, the processes of all users will be shown, otherwise, the processes of only currently logged-in user will be shown.
Terminal
Built-in terminal of Commander One is a replacement for OS X Terminal.app. Internal terminal is available in PRO Pack mode only!
To run any command, just type it in the command line in the lower pane of Commander One:
To launch the terminal itself, click Ctrl+O.
Note:
Commands can be run only locally, they do not take effect, for example, on an FTP server.
You can open OS X Terminal.app through Commander One’s interface. Just go to Commander One’s main menu –> Command –> Open Terminal:
Commander One 
