REVIEW · FILE MANAGER
Verdict: Nimble Commander is an excellent free file manager for keyboard-driven power users, and its search is better than most file managers': it finds items by attributes or content with its own search or through Spotlight, then lets you work on the results like a folder. It is a tool for people who know their way around a file system, not a casual document finder.
8 November 2026 · By Ishtiaque Hossain · 4 minute read · reviews Nimble Commander 1.8.0
Looking for a file you can describe but not name? Try Shlexball. The first 30 searches are free and need no account.
macOS 15 or later. Apple silicon. 16 GB memory. On a phone? Email yourself the link.
This review is based on Nimble Commander's own pages, read on 14 October 2026. Every claim links to the page it came from. We are the makers of Shlexball, so we say plainly where Nimble Commander does better.
| Price | Free and open source (GNU GPL version 3) |
| Runs on | macOS 11 or later; version 1.8.0 |
| Search | By attributes or content, with custom search or Spotlight; results open as a panel |
| Remote | FTP, SFTP and WebDAV, with remote editing |
| Made by | Michael Kazakov |
| Best for | Developers, system administrators and IT professionals |
Nimble Commander is a free dual-pane file manager for macOS with a classic design. Its aim is to blend the feel of the classic file managers of the 80s and 90s with the modern look of the Mac.
It is written mostly in C++ for speed and low use of system resources, and its makers say even dozens of windows and tabs are no big deal.
It is keyboard-centric, with shortcuts for more than a hundred actions, and highly customizable: colours, fonts, presentation, quick search behaviour, external tools and hotkeys.
Nimble Commander's File Search locates items by their attributes or by their content. You can use its own custom search or search with Spotlight.
Search results can be fed into a panel, a feature called panelizing, so you can copy, move or rename the found items as if they were in an ordinary folder.
Panels also support filtering and navigation by typing, selection by mask, quick selection by extension, and searching for items with specific tags.
A built-in terminal emulator opens in the same window and stays in sync with the panels, and an overlapped terminal can run alongside them. The built-in viewer shows files as text or hexadecimal, loading only a small part of very large files.
Batch Rename handles mass renaming with patterns, dates, search and replace, counters and letter case. Archives can be browsed like folders without unpacking, and files can be compressed to ZIP.
Admin mode gives unrestricted root access within the same panels after you enter administrator credentials, without restarting the app. You can also edit UNIX and BSD flags, file times, ownership, extended attributes, tags and links.
Remote FTP, SFTP and WebDAV servers work with the same tools, and you can open remote files in other apps and have changes uploaded back.
You can download Nimble Commander from its website, install it with Homebrew, or get it from the Mac App Store. Version 1.8.0 needs macOS 11 or later.
The two versions differ. The Mac App Store version is sandboxed, while the direct download adds admin mode, the built-in terminal, network share mounting and function keys without the Fn key.
The source code is on GitHub under the GNU General Public License version 3, with nightly builds, a user guide and a changelog, and contributions are welcome.
Its makers name the audience: software developers, system administrators, IT professionals and enthusiasts. If you like orthodox dual-pane file managers, this is a free, fast and well-maintained one.
If you rarely touch a terminal or file attributes, much of its power will go unused, though the file search alone is worth a look.
Nimble Commander needs attributes or words to search for. Shlexball finds a file from a plain-English description of what you remember, searching file and folder names and the text inside files, including PDFs and Word documents.
Shlexball is read-only and runs its language model on your Mac. The first 30 searches are free and need no account.
Shlexball finds a file by what it is about, no search criteria needed: 30 free searches.
▶ DOWNLOAD SHLEXBALLYes. It is free and open source, distributed under the GNU General Public License version 3.
Yes. File Search locates items by attributes or content, with its own custom search or with Spotlight.
The direct download adds admin mode, the built-in terminal and network share mounting; the Mac App Store version is sandboxed.
Download it from its website, get it from the Mac App Store, or install it with Homebrew. It needs macOS 11 or later.