Welcome to MTF Explorer

MTF Explorer is a dual-pane file manager for Windows that lets you work with local drives, network shares, cloud storage, FTP servers, and mobile devices side-by-side in a single window.

Interface Layout

Quick Start

1. Use the Drive selector at the top of each pane to pick a drive or connection.
2. Click folders to navigate, or type a path directly in the Path Bar. Press Enter to confirm.
3. Select files with a click (hold Ctrl or Shift for multiple). Press Ctrl+A to select all.
4. Use the toolbar buttons or right-click context menu to Copy, Move, Delete, or Rename.
5. Open Settings (top-right) to configure default paths, editor, theme, and language.

Navigation

Drive Selector

The dropdown at the top-left of each pane lists all available drives, network shares, and configured remote connections. Each entry shows the drive letter or label and a free-space percentage bar. Click the drive you want to switch the pane to that root.

Path Bar & Breadcrumbs

Below the drive selector, the path bar shows the current folder as a clickable breadcrumb trail. Click any segment to jump directly to that ancestor folder. Hover a segment and click the > arrow to see a list of subfolders at that level.

• Type a path — click the text area to the right of the breadcrumbs, type any local or UNC path, and press Enter.
• Bookmark current path — right-click the path bar and choose Add to Bookmarks, or press Ctrl+D.
• Copy path — right-click the path bar and choose Copy path.

Up / Down Buttons

The Up button navigates to the parent directory. The Down button opens the selected folder, or moves forward in navigation history if nothing is selected.

Bookmarks

Bookmarks save a pair of left and right paths. When you open a bookmark, both panes jump to the stored paths simultaneously.

• Add: press Ctrl+D, or right-click the path bar and choose Add to Bookmarks.
• Open: click the Bookmarks button in the top bar, then select an entry from the list.
• Delete: open the Bookmarks list, hover an entry, and click the remove icon.

Link Panes

When Link Panes is active (top-bar toggle), navigating in one pane mirrors the same path in the other. Useful when comparing or synchronizing identical folder trees. Click the toggle again to unlink.

Swap Panes

The Swap button in the top bar exchanges the content and active state of the left and right panes instantly — useful when you realise the source and destination are reversed.

File Operations

Copy & Move

Select items in one pane and click Copy (F7) or Move (F8). The destination is always the folder currently open in the opposite pane. A progress overlay appears with per-file and overall progress, speed, and estimated time remaining.

• Verification — if enabled in Settings, SHA-256 checksums are compared after each transfer.
• Conflict resolution — when a file already exists at the destination, a dialog asks whether to skip, overwrite, rename, or apply the same choice to all conflicts.
• Retry on error — transient I/O errors are retried automatically the configured number of times before prompting.
• Cancel — click the Cancel button in the overlay to abort. Already-transferred files are not deleted on cancel.

Drag & Drop

Files and folders can be dragged between the two panes or dropped in from Windows Explorer.

• Drag from one pane to the other to copy the selection to the destination folder.
• Hold Shift while dropping to move instead of copy.
• Drop files or folders dragged from Windows Explorer directly into either pane to copy them into the currently open folder.
• Dropping onto the same pane is ignored — only cross-pane drops are accepted.

Delete

Press Delete or click the toolbar Delete button to send selected items to the Recycle Bin. A confirmation dialog appears before any deletion. To permanently delete without the Recycle Bin, use Shift+Delete.

Secure Delete Premium

Secure Delete performs a 3-pass DoD 5220.22-M overwrite (zeros, ones, random bytes) before removing each file, making recovery significantly harder with conventional tools. Available via the toolbar button or the right-click menu under Delete > Secure Delete.

Rename

Press F2 or click a selected filename after a short pause to start inline renaming. The filename is selected automatically (excluding extension). Press Enter to confirm or Esc to cancel.

Right-click a selection for batch rename modes:

New Folder

Click the New Folder toolbar button to create a new directory in the active pane. The folder name is immediately available for inline editing.

Open / View / Edit

• Open (Enter or double-click) — launches the file with the default Windows application.
• View (F5) — same as Open, uses the default associated application.
• Edit (F6) — opens the file in the configured text editor (Notepad, VS Code, Notepad++, or custom). Set your editor in Settings > Editor.
• Print (Ctrl+P) — sends the selected file to the Windows print dialog.

Clipboard Operations

• Copy Name — copies just the filename (without path) to the clipboard.
• Copy Full Path — copies the complete absolute path to the clipboard.

Shell & Terminal

Right-click in any pane to open a terminal or file manager at the current path:

• Open in Explorer
• Open CMD
• Open CMD as Administrator
• Open PowerShell
• Open PowerShell as Administrator

Custom Tools

Custom Tools let you launch any external program or script directly from the MTF Explorer toolbar, with the current pane context automatically injected as arguments. Open the manager via the toolbar wrench icon or through Settings > Custom Tools.

Tool Fields

Argument Placeholders

Use these placeholders in the Arguments field — they are replaced at launch time with live pane values:

Accessing Custom Tools

• Each tool appears as a button in the top toolbar immediately to the left of the manage-tools button.
• Tools also appear in the right-click context menu under the Custom Tools submenu (if that item is enabled in the context menu editor).
• Click the manage-tools button (wrench icon) to add, edit, reorder, or remove tools at any time.

Context Menu Customization

The right-click context menu is fully customizable. Open Settings > Context Menu to reorder, hide, or group menu items to match your workflow.

Available Actions

Every built-in action can be individually shown or hidden and placed anywhere in the menu. Available actions include:

• Open, Open With, Open in Explorer
• Open Terminal (CMD, CMD as Admin, PowerShell, PowerShell as Admin)
• Copy, Move, Send To
• Open Archive, Zip, Unzip
• New Folder, New Text File, Convert Image, Rename
• Copy Name, Copy Full Path
• Delete (including Secure Delete)
• Tags
• Properties, System Properties

Using the Editor

• Drag items up or down to reorder them in the menu.
• Add separators between items to create visual groups.
• Add a custom group (submenu) with a name and icon, then drag actions into it to nest them one level deep.
• Toggle the visibility checkbox next to any item to hide it without removing it from the layout.
• Click Reset to Default to restore the original factory layout at any time.

View & Display

Thumbnails

Toggle the Thumbnails button in the toolbar to show image previews alongside filenames. Works for common image formats (JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF, WebP, HEIC) as well as video thumbnail frames. Thumbnail loading is asynchronous and does not block scrolling.

Preview Panel

Click the Preview toolbar toggle to open a side panel showing a larger thumbnail, the file name, type, size, dimensions (for images/video), and modification date. Drag the splitter between the file list and preview panel to resize.

Column View (Miller Columns)

Toggle the Columns view button (next to the Thumbnails button) to switch to a macOS Finder-style column layout. Each column shows the contents of a folder. Clicking a subfolder immediately opens it as an adjacent column to the right, letting you navigate a directory tree without leaving the current view.

• Single-click a folder to expand it into the next column. Columns to the right are automatically removed.
• Single-click a file to select it. Double-click to open it with the default application.
• The path bar updates as you navigate deeper into the tree.
• The column view mode is saved per pane and restored on next launch.

Custom Columns

Click the Columns button to toggle optional metadata columns:

Sorting

Click any column header to sort by that field. Click again to toggle ascending/descending order. The current sort direction is shown with an arrow indicator. Sort state is saved per workspace tab.

Available sort fields: Name, Size, Date Modified, Attributes, and any visible custom columns.

UI Density

In Settings > UI Density, switch between Normal and Compact modes. Compact mode reduces row height and font sizes for more items visible at once.

Inline Tag Display

Click the Tags toolbar toggle to show tag chips beneath each filename. Click a chip to open the tag picker for that file, or press Ctrl+T on a selected item.

Search

MTF Explorer provides three complementary search mechanisms: filename pattern search (instant, no index required), a local filename index (fast, SQLite-backed), and AI semantic search (natural language, embedding-based). All three are accessed from the Search button in each pane's toolbar.

Filename Pattern Search

Type a pattern in the Pattern box. The search starts from the folder currently open in that pane.

• * matches any sequence of characters — e.g. report*.pdf
• ? matches exactly one character — e.g. file?.txt
• Enable Regex to use full .NET regular expressions — e.g. ^invoice_\d{4}\.xlsx$

The Extensions box narrows results to specific file types: enter a semicolon-separated list such as .jpg;.png;.webp.

Advanced Filters

Expand the Advanced panel for additional filter controls:

Duplicate Detection

Enable Find Duplicates to locate files with identical content. Enable Verify Hashes to use SHA-256 comparison for byte-perfect accuracy (slower but authoritative). Results are grouped so each duplicate cluster appears together in the list.

Local Search Index

The local search index is a SQLite database of filenames built ahead of time, making pattern searches across large directory trees nearly instant. It is separate from AI semantic search and operates entirely on filenames — not file contents.

Configuring the Index (Settings > Search Index)

AI Semantic Search Premium

AI semantic search embeds both your files and your query as high-dimensional vectors and returns results by similarity — not keyword matching. You can describe what you are looking for in plain language and find files whose names, folder paths, or contents capture that meaning, even if none of the exact words appear.

Each search combines two complementary techniques via Reciprocal Rank Fusion: a dense semantic pass (embedding similarity) that understands meaning, and a BM25 keyword pass (full-text search) that excels at exact terms, version numbers, and identifiers. The two ranked lists are merged so results strong in either dimension float to the top.

All processing runs entirely on your device. Models are downloaded once from Hugging Face and stored locally. No filenames, paths, or content ever leave your machine.

Quick Start

1. Open Settings > AI Search and enable AI Search.
2. Pick a model (see the Model Reference table below). Click Download and wait.
3. Add one or more Index Roots (the folders you want searchable).
4. Click Build Index. A progress bar shows files processed. After the build, a file system watcher keeps the index up to date automatically as files change.
5. In the search panel, switch on AI Search, type a natural-language query, and click Search.

Model Reference

Choose the model that best fits your balance of speed, disk space, and query quality. All models listed below are open-source (Apache 2.0 or MIT) and run on CPU via ONNX Runtime — no GPU required.

Indexed File Types & Content Extraction

When Index file contents is enabled, the indexer streams the full text of each file and splits it into overlapping chunks — no file size limit applies to text and code files. Large source files, logs, and documents are fully covered regardless of size. Only the size of the embedding model's context window limits how much fits in each chunk.

Content Chunking Settings

Text and code files are streamed and split into overlapping windows. A sliding buffer of at most two chunk-widths is held in memory at once, so even very large files are processed without loading the entire content into RAM. PDFs are chunked per page using the same sentence-boundary splitter.

AI Search Settings Reference (Settings > AI Search)

Query-Time Controls (Search panel)

CLIP Image Search in Detail

CLIP (Contrastive Language-Image Pretraining) is fundamentally different from the text embedding models. Where text models find files whose names or content match your query semantically, CLIP finds images whose visual appearance matches your text description.

• Encoding — during indexing each image is run through the CLIP vision encoder and stored as a 512-dimensional vector.
• Querying — your text query is encoded by the CLIP text encoder into the same 512-dimensional space. Results are ranked by cosine similarity between the text vector and each image vector.
• What works well — visual descriptions: "screenshot with dark background", "handwritten notes", "bar chart", "dog playing in snow".
• What does not work — CLIP does not read text inside images (no OCR). Do not use it to find images containing a specific word; use the OCR-capable text models for that.
• File types — only the Images file type group is indexed when CLIP is selected. Enabling other groups has no effect.
• Setup — CLIP downloads two ONNX files (text encoder + vision encoder) totalling ~350 MB.

Getting the Most Out of AI Search

• Start with MiniLM-L6 for a low-friction first experience. Upgrade to BGE-base or MPNet if recall is poor on specific query types.
• Use descriptive phrases, not single keywords. "quarterly sales report Europe 2023" outperforms "report".
• Enable file content indexing for document-heavy or code-heavy folders. Without it, only filenames and paths are matched — the full text of PDFs, source files, and documents is invisible to the search engine.
• Search code by concept, not exact identifier. Because camelCase identifiers are automatically broken into words in the keyword index, searching "connection pool timeout" will match files containing connectionPoolTimeout, ConnectionPoolTimeoutException, and similar names.
• Keep chunk overlap at 150+ for PDFs and long text files to avoid losing information at chunk boundaries.
• Lower Min Score (to 20-30%) if you get zero or very few results. The right file may be present but scored below the default threshold. Keyword-only matches (found by BM25) appear with a small non-zero score even if semantic similarity is low.
• Raise Min Score (to 70-80%) when results are noisy and you know exactly what you want.
• Limit file type groups to what you actually search. Disabling large code or log groups cuts build time and index size significantly.
• Use LaBSE Multilingual if your files or queries span multiple languages — all other models are English-optimised.
• For image libraries, use CLIP with concise visual descriptions. For images that contain text you want to search (screenshots, scanned docs), use any text model with the OCR-capable Images group.
• Rebuild after major file reorganisations. The auto-watcher handles incremental changes (creates, edits, deletes, renames) but a full rebuild ensures nothing is missed after large batch moves or copies.

Find Similar Files

Right-click any file and choose Find Similar Files (AI) to find other files in the same pane whose content or name is semantically close to the selected file. Results replace the pane's file list and are scored by similarity, just like a regular AI search.

• Requires AI Search to be enabled and an index to be built for the current pane's folder.
• The search is scoped to the folder currently open in the pane — files outside that folder are not returned even if they are indexed.
• The embedding used is the centroid (average) of all content chunks stored for the selected file, giving a whole-file representation rather than matching on a single excerpt.
• If the selected file has not been indexed yet, it is embedded on the fly using the active model before searching.
• Only available for files, not folders.

Disk Usage Analysis

The Disk Usage panel scans the current folder and displays a Squarified Treemap — a rectangle-based visualization where each block's size corresponds to the disk space consumed by that item. Larger blocks represent larger folders or files.

Opening the Panel

Click the Disk Usage button (treemap icon) in the left or right pane toolbar. The panel opens inline above the file list for that pane and begins scanning immediately. A refresh indicator appears during the scan.

Reading the Treemap

• Rectangle size is proportional to total folder size (all contents, recursive).
• Color depth indicates folder nesting level; darker shades are deeper.
• Each rectangle shows the folder name and size when large enough to fit.
• Hover a block to see the full path and exact size in the footer.

Navigating the Treemap

• Double-click a block to drill down into that folder (treemap re-draws for that subtree).
• Use the breadcrumb in the footer to navigate back up the hierarchy.
• Right-click a block and choose Explore content to navigate the parent pane to that folder.

Full-Screen Mode

Click the Expand button (⤢) in the disk usage panel header to switch to a full-screen overlay that spans the entire application window. This gives much more space for large folder trees. Press the Close button or Esc to return to normal view.

Refreshing

Click the Refresh button in the panel header to re-scan the folder from scratch. This is useful after copying, deleting, or moving files.

Archive Operations

Create ZIP

Select one or more files or folders, then click the Zip (compress) toolbar button or choose Create ZIP from the context menu. A dialog lets you name the archive; it is created in the same folder as the selected items. If an archive with that name already exists, you are asked to overwrite or rename.

Extract ZIP

Select a .zip file and click the Unzip (extract) toolbar button or choose Extract ZIP from the context menu. Contents are extracted into a subfolder named after the archive. If files already exist at the destination, the conflict resolution dialog appears.

Browse Archive as Folder

Select a .zip and choose Open Archive as Folder from the context menu. The archive is mounted as a virtual folder; you can navigate inside, copy files out, and view contents without extracting. To leave the archive, click the Up button or navigate to a different path.

Tags & Metadata

About Tags

Tags are user-defined labels you can assign to any file or folder. They are stored in the application database and appear as coloured chips in the file list. Tags survive renames as long as the file stays within indexed paths.

Creating Tags

Open the Tag Manager from the sidebar or context menu to create, rename, colour, or delete tags. Each tag has a name and a custom colour for visual identification.

Assigning Tags

• Select files and press Ctrl+T to open the tag picker inline.
• Right-click selected items and choose Tags from the context menu.
• Click a tag chip already shown on a file to toggle it off.

Auto-Tag Rules

In the Tag Manager, create Auto-Tag Rules: each rule is a regular expression pattern applied to filenames. Files matching the pattern are automatically assigned the associated tag when they are indexed or discovered. Example: pattern invoice_\d+ with tag Invoice.

Filtering by Tags

• Tag Sidebar — click the Tags toggle in the top bar to show the sidebar. Click any tag chip to filter both panes to show only items with that tag.
• Search Filters — in the search panel's Required Tags and Excluded Tags fields, type tag names (comma-separated) to include or exclude tagged files.

Metadata Columns

Enable optional columns from the Columns toolbar button to display EXIF, ID3, or media metadata (dimensions, date taken, duration, title, artist) directly in the file list. Click column headers to sort by these fields.

Cloud & Remote Connections Premium

Click the Connections button in the top bar to manage all remote connections. Once configured, each connection appears in the Drive selector of both panes and can be browsed, copied to/from, and used in search.

Google Drive

Provide a label, a Client ID, a Client Secret (from the Google Cloud Console), and optionally a Shared Drive ID for Google Workspace shared drives. After saving, an OAuth browser window appears to authorise access. Credentials are stored in the Windows Credential Manager and not included in settings exports.

Azure Blob Storage

Provide a label, the connection string from your Azure Storage account (found in Settings > Access Keys in the Azure Portal), and the target container name. Files appear as a flat list (Azure Blob does not have real folders; the path separator is emulated).

AWS S3

Provide a label, AWS profile or access key/secret, region, and bucket name. You can optionally specify a prefix to browse only a subdirectory of the bucket. Works with any S3-compatible storage service.

FTP / SFTP / FTPS

Provide a label, host, port (default 21 for FTP, 22 for SFTP), username and password, and select the protocol:

• FTP — plain (unencrypted)
• FTPS — FTP with TLS (implicit or explicit)
• SFTP — SSH File Transfer Protocol (can use a private key file instead of password)

MTP Devices (Phones, Cameras)

Connect a phone, camera, or other MTP/PTP device via USB. Open Connections > Manage MTP to see detected devices. Select a device and click Browse to load it in a pane — the device appears in the drive selector. You can copy files from the device to a local folder. Uploading to MTP devices is not supported due to Windows API limitations.

Compare & Sync

Click the Compare button in the top bar to open the comparison overlay. It analyses the contents of the left and right panes side-by-side and shows synchronisation status for each item.

Filter Views

Use the Filter dropdown to narrow the displayed items:

Synchronisation Operations

Refreshing

Click Refresh in the compare overlay to re-scan both panes and update all status indicators. Do this after a sync operation or after modifying files externally.

Workspaces

Workspaces are named tabs that each remember an independent pair of left and right paths, plus sort state (field and direction) for each pane. Switch between them instantly from the dropdown in the top bar.

Managing Workspaces

• Add — click the + button next to the workspace dropdown to create a new workspace starting from the current paths.
• Rename — click the workspace name in the dropdown list to edit it inline.
• Remove — hover a workspace entry and click the remove icon. At least one workspace is always kept.
• Switch — click any workspace entry in the dropdown. Both panes and sort states update instantly.

Persisted State

Each workspace remembers:

• Left and right folder paths
• Sort field and direction for each pane
• Active custom column visibility

State is saved automatically when you navigate away or close the application.

Settings

Open Settings from the gear icon in the top-right toolbar. Settings are organised into the following sections:

Default Paths

Set the default left and right pane paths that are loaded when the application starts (or when a new workspace is created). Use the browse button to pick a folder. Leave blank to use the last-used path.

Editor

Choose which application is launched when you press F6 (Edit):

• Notepad (Windows built-in)
• Visual Studio Code
• Notepad++
• Custom — enter the full path to any executable

Transfer Settings

UI & Appearance

Data Management

• Export Settings — saves all settings to a .json file. You can choose to include tags, auto-tag rules, and context menu layout. Cloud credentials are never exported.
• Import Settings — load settings from a previously exported file. A confirmation dialog shows what will be overwritten.
• View Logs — opens the application log folder in Windows Explorer for troubleshooting.

Keyboard Shortcuts

All shortcuts below are the defaults. To customise them, open Help > Keyboard Shortcuts. Conflicts are detected automatically and highlighted in the shortcut editor.

Navigation

File Operations

Shell & Terminal

Tags

Subscription & Licensing

Trial Mode

MTF Explorer starts in Trial mode, which provides full access to core features for a limited period. The subscription chip in the top bar shows the remaining trial days. Core features available in trial:

• Dual-pane navigation, copy, move, delete, rename
• Thumbnails, column view, preview panel, custom columns, sorting
• Advanced search with filters and duplicate detection
• ZIP create and extract
• Tags and auto-tag rules
• Multiple workspaces
• Compare and sync
• Disk usage analysis

Premium Features

Activating a License

Click the subscription chip in the top bar (labelled Trial or License required) and follow the prompts to subscribe or enter a license key. An active internet connection is required for activation. Once activated, the chip changes to Licensed.

Managing Your Subscription

Click the Licensed chip and choose Manage to view your subscription details, renewal date, and billing options through the subscription portal.