"Sigma File Manager" is a free, open-source, quickly evolving, modern file manager (explorer / finder) app for Windows and Linux.
Designed, developed, and maintained by Aleksey Hoffman | Twitter | Reddit
💗 Thanks to everyone who have been sharing this project with others!
Artwork in the image: Futuristic Japanese Palanquin by Julien Gauthier
See the "Download" section below.
Create the best existing intelligent file manager & productivity app that will significantly speed up your workflow, provide you with advanced tools, and keep your data safe.
Done 20 of 100 major features.
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SMART GLOBAL SEARCH: feature allows you to find any file / directory on your computer in just a few seconds. It also implements a typo correction system, allowing you to find files even when the search query includes typos, wrong case, wrong word order, missing words, missing symbols, and missing file extension.
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TABS: feature allows you to quickly switch between multiple directories with a click or a shortcut.
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WORKSPACES: feature allows you to create separate workspaces with their own tabs and pre-defined actions, allowing you to quickly switch between them. Actions can perform different operations, e.g. open a website, run a script, open a file in a specific program, etc.
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ADVANCED WIRELESS FILE SHARING: share a directory or stream any file to your local devices wirelessly without installing any apps. It works on any device with a modern web browser (smart TVs, mobile devices, laptops, virtual machines, etc).
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ADDRESS BAR: lets you quickly navigate directories with your keyboard. It autocompletes file names and automatically opens directories as you type.
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ITEM FILTER: allows you to filter out items from the list to quickly find the one you need. It supports advanced glob patterns and property prefixes.
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ADVANCED FILE DOWNLOADER: stream / download any file from the internet just by dragging it (or its URL link) onto the app. It supports all file types, including videos from video services like Youtube and video streams (with or without auth tokens / URL timestamps).
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SMART DRAG & DROP: allows you to easily download files from the internet, and provides a comfortable way of copying / moving local files.
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SHORTCUTS: most actions within the app can be performed with shortcuts. You can also create global (system wide) shortcuts for some actions like opening / hiding the app or opening the app and instantly creating a new note.
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CUSTOMIZABLE HOME PAGE BANNER: The home page of the app has a unique, recognizable feature - a customizable media background (banner). You can set a custom image / video or choose one of the built-in artworks (kindly provided to me by different artists) and personalize the app to your liking.
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NOTES: Advanced note editor in this app allows you to create featureful notes and store them in one convenient, quickly accessible place.
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DASHBOARD: Dashboard page provides a quick access to pinned / protected / tagged items, and the timeline.
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FILE PROTECTION: This feature allows you to protect any file / directory / note from being modified / renamed / moved / deleted.
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INFO PANEL: displays useful information about currently selected file / directory and the file preview for media files: audio, video, images (including animated gifs, apng, webp, and many other formats).
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ARCHIVER: tuilt-in archiver allows you to compress files into archives and extract existing archives. It supports all most popular formats. See the list of formats on the "features" wiki page
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AUTO UPDATES: the app updates itself automatically. It will let you decide if and when you want to download and install an update.
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COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION: unlike closed-sourced apps, you participate in the development of this app (request features, vote each features should be prioritized, participate in discussions, modify code of the app yourself).
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QUICK VIEW: allows you to quickly open selected files in a preview window, rather than an external program by pressing
Spacebutton. It supports images, videos, audio, PDF, most plain text formats. -
INFUSIVE DESIGN: this app implements my custom, modern, beautiful, minimalistic, customizable, design system called "Infusive design".
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WINDOW TRANSPARENCY EFFECTS: is one of the key components of "Infusive design". This effect "infuses" all elements of the app with a customizable, modern, unified look and provides infinite beautiful, unique design customization options.
Several more major features / improvements are already in development and will be added in the next updates.
DETAILED FEATURE DESCRIPTION (WIKI) →
This app is free but is needs supporters to stay alive and to keep improving. Please consider supporting it on Patreon with a few $ per month.
The people and companies show below are currently funding this project. Thanks to them I can keep working on this app, they are the reason good quality free software can exist.
Become the first supporter
Become the first supporter
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| ⭐ Houston Photo Restoration |
⭐ Andy Pfister
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⭐ Alex Ivantsov
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Check out the list of rewards you will get for supporting this project:
- Supporters are added to the list from top to bottom. The earlier you start supporting the project, the higher your name will be on the list.
- "3+ months" supporters will have the ⭐ badge displayed next to their name.
- The funding will be used for:
- Fund the development of this project;
- Fund the development of my other big projects. Right now, I'm working in collaboration with a few universities on advanced tools / algorithms that will help scientists speed up development of new medications and treatments for diseases, reducing the time need to find a new medication from 10 years (current average) to just a few months, and hopefully help humanity get rid of diseases (the project will be open-sourced in a few months);
- Support other open-source and open-content creators (developers, educators, digital artists, etc);
Click on an image to visit the artist's page. If you like their art, consider supporting their work. You can find their support links in the app on the artwork cards in the background manager (app home page > banner menu > background manager).
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- Memory (RAM): minimum: ~100 MB, average: ~400 MB;
- Storage: minimum: ~370 MB;
- OS: 64-bit: Windows, Linux;
If you're running the app on the integrated GPU, the RAM usage will increase during video playback. Videos playing in the background (e.g. on the home page) are the main reason to high memory usage. You can reduce memory usage by choosing a static image for the "Windows transparency effect" and the home banner.
| Operating system | Download link (latest version) |
|---|---|
| Windows (via winget) |
winget install sigma
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| Windows | Download installable app (exe) |
| Linux and links will be added soon. If you know how, you can build the app from the source code yourself | Coming soon |
- The app is still in early development (prototyping) stage. It is safe to use, it should not delete or damage any files by itself, but it's recommended to backup (copy) your important data to an external backup drive or to your cloud storage, just for good practice.
- Expect to see some errors and performance issues in the first versions of the app. I will be fixing the problems gradually as they get reported by the users.
- The app has not been optimized yet, RAM usage can spike and go over 1 GB during some operations. So, for now, avoid using the app on low-tier computers (i.e. computers with 4 GB of RAM or less).
You can follow me on Twitter if you want to:
- Get updates on this app, see screenshots of features in development
- Learn about my new projects
- See some memes about programming
- Or just read my thoughts on different things
If you can also click the "watch" button on top of the page if you want to get notified when I publish a new release, or someone opens a new discussion / issue.
💡 Hidden treasures
There's a fun secret hidden somewhere in the app. See if you can find it. Hint: only the dinosaur knows about it.
- Create feature request
- Create problem report
- Create discussion
- See changelog
- See features in development
✅ v1.0.0 (May 25 2021): publish the app;
✅ by v1.1.0 (May 27 2021): new features, improvements, and fixes;
✅ by v1.2.0 (June 2021): new features, improvements, and fixes;
✅ by v1.3.0 (Augest 2021): new feature, improvements, and fixes;
✅ by v1.4.0 (September 2021): new feature, improvements, and fixes;
⬜ by v1.5.0: new feature, improvements, and fixes. Localize the app to 10+ most popular languages;
⬜ ...
⬜ by v2.0.0: (3/20) Add 20 more new major features;
⬜ End goal: improve the app to the point of becoming the best file manager and one the most useful productivity apps. This milestone will be considered to be achieved when at least 3 reputable independent sources (reviewers / platforms) decide that the app has achieved all of the following titles:
- ⬜ (0/3 sources) the best productivity impact;
- ⬜ (0/3 sources) the best UI design;
- ⬜ (0/3 sources) the best feature set;
- ⬜ (0/3 sources) the fastest improvement rate;
- ⬜ (0/3 sources) the most loved file manager app;
- ⬜ (0/3 sources) the most intelligent file manager app;
- ⬜ (0/3 sources) is one of top 3 desktop productivity apps;
Links to reviews: none yet.
Slots taken: 5 / 25 people.
TL;DR: 8 hours of online lessons with shared screens will teach you most basic programming concepts, how you to design and build basic web app, how to work with Git, how to learn quickly, and a few other important things; ~200 hours and you will learn most of the concepts and get enough practice to build more complex apps and allow you to get a good paying job in the industry.
I'm available for personal tutoring (programming, design, web and app development, general industry knowledge). I can teach you how to code, design, and think, answer all your questions, share my experience, tips, and best practices, explain which tools to use and why, and teach you everything you will need to know to become a professional Junior grade UI designer and Junior software engineer in just under 200 hours, which is much faster than most universities with their outdated, boring, disconnected from reality, inefficient, 4 years long bachelor curriculums, that mostly train you how to pass tests, rather than how to think.
What you will get out of it:
- Specialization: Junior grade UI and UX designer (median yearly salary: ~$80,000);
- Specialization: Junior grade web developer (median yearly salary: ~$70,000);
- Specialization: Junior grade desktop app developer (median yearly salary: ~$90,000);
- Specialization basics: You will learn the basics of mobile app and game development;
- Potential specializations: if you keep learning you will be able to reach Middle or even Senior grade level and get much higher salary;
- Potentialy more interesting job: these lessons might interest you in things you never even thought about, like game development, which might be more interesting than your current job;
- Future skills: You will get the skills needed for the era of automation, and be ready to change your job when it gets automated or in case you just want to change the work field;
- General knowledge: You will learn general knowledge about different systems, for example, what programs (tools) to use for different tasks (coding, design, game dev), how the internet functions, how do we make computers do what we tell them, how we create artificial intelligence, etc.
- 🎁 Supporter rewards: as a bonus, you will also get all rewards of the "Generous supporter" tier on the Patreon page of my Sigma File Manager app for as long as you are attending the lessons: https://www.patreon.com/sigma_file_manager
Tutoring rate: $5 - $25 / hour. Depends on the amount of people in the group:
- 1 person: $25 / hour;
- 5 people group: $5 / hour per person;
You can stop at any point, if you feel it's not for you.
Contacts: you can contact me via the email specified on my profile page
Even though I've spent 3000+ hours developing this app, I decided to make it free and open-source because open-source is more than just a way to share your work, it has larger impact on the development of our society than you think.
When we create close-sourced, overly-copyrighted products, and hide our work behind paywalls and patents, with the primary goal of enriching yourself, we slow down our development.
As history has shown us, when we share our knowledge with each other freely and build upon each other's work, we increase the rate of our technological development, which improves well-being of everyone as a result. Science is the greatest example of what shared collaborative work can do for us. This is why open-source and open-content concepts are so important. Projects like this wouldn't be possible without it.
Relying on donations is no doubt a less profitable model, but I think it's better when the people who use your work are the ones who determine how much support you receive. This is how we incentivize and motivate creators to improve, to make better, more useful, more enriching products / artworks / software / technologies.
By creating this app, I also wanted to show every beginner that no project is too big for your skills - all you need to do is just start making it, work hard on it every day, learn in the process, and simply don't stop until you create something really good. That's the secret to creating something great.
This app is an example of what dedication can do for you - when I started this project I could barely code, and in just 2 years of work with budget of $0, the dedication allowed me to create an app, which in version 1.0 in some aspects can already compete with apps like Windows "File Explorer" which has been in development for 24+ years by a trillion dollars worth company's team of many highly paid professional developers and designers each of whom has specialized skills, experience, all the resources, tools, and computing power in the world, including super computers, AI algorithms, neural networks, the ability to employ any specialist in the world, and the enormous amounts of data. And despite not having any of this, you can still make a competitive product, if you just start making it and keep working on it. But as I said earlier, this is only possible in the world where we build upon each other's work, rather than hiding our work and experience from each other behind patents and copyrights.
This is how and why "Sigma file manager" was created. It all started from a simple idea of making a concept design, but thanks to other open-source developers, who also decided to share their work with the world, I was able to turn this idea into a quickly evolving app with great potential. Building something for others also gave me a lot of ideas for more impactful projects, some of which are already in development.
Open-source projects:
- Electron: Makes it possible to create cross-platform apps for desktop platforms.
- Vue.js: A wonderful JS framework that speeds up web development.
- VSCode: One of the best code editors that significantly simplifies the development process.
- Vuetify: Material components library that speeds up UI development.
- Templarian/MaterialDesign: Provides beautiful, community created, free icons.
- ytdl-org/youtube-dl: Allows the app to download videos from a URL link using Python.
- FFMPEG: Allows the app to convert and edit audio/video/images and get the media info.
- 7-zip.org: Allows the app to work with archives (compress/decompress directories and files).
- xxoo/node-fswin: Windows OS native API bindings for Node.js.
Developers, feel free to optimize and improve the app. Make sure to create a new issue or a discussion before implementing changes, so we can discuss the changes first.
See CONTRIBUTING.md file for more info.
Sigma file manager is licensed under GNU GPLv3 or later.
Copyright © 2021 - present Aleksey Hoffman. All rights reserved.