S Files Pro X and S Renamer Blog

From a blue folder to a ribbon S: the S Files logo through the years

2026-10-02T00:00:00Z

The app has had seven logos since it first appeared on the Microsoft Store in 2020. Here they are in order, with the version that brought each one.

June 2020
The first icon: a blue folder, for a "modern dual pane file manager". Fun fact: it was literally a picture of an actual physical file folder.
October 2020, version 0.19
The folder gets an S.
January 2021
A bolder S in white, with a woven texture, on a blue folder.
February 2021, version 0.37
The folder goes, and the S becomes a ribbon folding back on itself. Every logo since has been based on this ribbon.
March 2022, version 1.57
The new Pro X version, still in beta, gets its own colors.
May 2022, version 1.74
The ribbon turns blue, days before Shrestha Files Pro X 2.0 launched.
May 2023, version 3.0
The ribbon goes back on a folder. This is the logo the app uses today.

Ideas along the way

Not every design made it into the app. Putting the ribbon on a folder was first tried in September 2021, around the time work on the new Windows App SDK version was getting started. And two days before the purple Pro X logo was finished, a version with a blue and purple gradient was on the table.

September 2021

March 2022

The name changed too

The app started out as Shrestha Files, and the paid version was Shrestha Files Pro. The rebuilt version launched in May 2022 as Shrestha Files Pro X, and by version 3.0 in May 2023 it was S Files Pro X.

Read more about each step in the blog and the changelog.

September 2026: sharper icons, fewer crashes and an updated foundation

2026-09-20T00:00:00Z

September 2026 brought a run of updates focused on polish: a newer foundation, crash fixes, and a lot of small visual fixes you notice every day.

An updated foundation

Version 3.25 (September 13) updated the app to Windows App SDK 1.8, along with other framework updates.
This builds on version 3.24 (February 2025), which moved the app from .NET 6 to .NET 8.

You will not see these changes directly, but they keep the app current with the latest Windows platform.

Fewer crashes, no more locked files

Version 3.26 fixed:

the PDF viewer and the audio and video players keeping a file locked after you closed them, so you could not move or delete it until you quit the app,
crashes when navigating between pages, when recovering from a damaged settings file at startup, when checking the license without an internet connection, and when showing the changelog after an update,
a rare crash caused by two versions of the same interface library being loaded at once,
shortcuts to web apps (such as Install as app in Chrome or Edge) showing the browser’s icon instead of the site’s own icon,
blurry icons in places like the Properties pane.

New items land where you can see them

Version 3.27 made creating files and folders feel right:

New files, folders and zip archives are scrolled into view and selected, even in a long list.
New items appear in their sorted position instead of at the end of the list.
New empty files and folders no longer show a blurry icon until you refresh.
Selected items now have a border in every view, instead of a thin accent line on the left.
Shortcut (.lnk) icons, for websites and programs, are sharp instead of pixelated.

S Renamer 1.2

On September 16, S Renamer 1.2 rebuilt its file browsing and rename engine on a new library, loads thumbnails faster in folders with many images, and moved to .NET 8.

Getting the update

Updates are rolled out gradually through the Microsoft Store, so not everyone gets a new version on the same day. See the S Files Pro X changelog and the S Renamer changelog for the full details.

Column view and the command palette are now standard

2023-12-31T00:00:00Z

Some features start as experiments, so they can be tried and polished before everyone gets them. On the last day of 2023, version 3.21 turned several of them into regular settings.

Column view

Column view shows folders as Miller columns, like the column view in the Mac Finder: each folder you open appears in a new column to the right, so the path stays on screen.

July 2023, version 3.10: column mode arrived as an experimental setting.
August 2023, version 3.12: a setting to change the column width followed.
December 2023, version 3.21: it became a regular option. Turn it on in Settings > General > Enable Column Mode, and adjust Column Width for Column Mode.

Column view today.

Command palette

Press Ctrl+Shift+K, type what you want to do, such as Create New Text Document, and run it.

July 2023, version 3.11: the command palette arrived as an experiment.
August 2023, version 3.14: browsing the commands with the keyboard no longer re-filters the list.
December 2023, version 3.21: it is visible by default, has an X button to close it, and can be turned off in Settings > General > Show Command Palette.

The command palette today.

Also on by default in 3.21

Phones and cameras (MTP devices) show up on the Home page. You can turn this off in Settings > Home Page.
Drives and devices update automatically when you connect or disconnect them.

And a few more settings graduated from Experimental:

Settings > Miscellaneous > AutoStart with Windows starts S Files Pro X when you sign in.
Settings > File Operations > Make Clipboard Data Available Even After the App is Closed keeps copied files on the clipboard after you close the app. Copying many files takes longer with this on.

Other things from the second half of 2023

Click a folder with the mouse wheel to open it in a new tab (3.11).
Tabs with search results, and their filters, are restored when you restart (3.11).
You can choose which file extensions open in each built-in viewer, in the settings file (3.11).

See the changelog for version 3.21.

Meet S Renamer: rename many files at once with stacked rules

2023-12-14T00:00:00Z

S Renamer started life inside S Files Pro X: version 3.13 (August 2023) added a bulk renamer to the file manager. That same month, early 0.x versions of S Renamer appeared on the Microsoft Store as an app of its own. In November the renamer inside S Files was switched off in favor of the standalone app, and on December 14, 2023, S Renamer reached version 1.0.

Three rules, one preview: Project becomes This Project is Awesome.

What it does

Pick a folder, tick the files and folders to rename, and add rules. S Renamer applies the rules in order and shows each new name before anything changes. When the preview looks right, click Rename.

Nine rules

Add Prefix
Add Suffix
Add Character At Index
Remove Prefix Count
Remove Suffix Count
Remove Prefix Upto Character
Remove Suffix From Character
Remove Character Range
Replace Characters

Each rule can change the name or the extension. The guide How to rename multiple files at once has an example for every one.

Made to be quick

A built-in file browser, with drives and libraries in the sidebar.
Drag rules to reorder them, or delete the ones you no longer need.
Resize the rules area and the file list to fit what you are working on.
Double-click an empty area of the list to go up a folder.
Light, dark or the Windows default theme.

S Renamer 1.0 is available in English, Spanish and Chinese Simplified, thanks to Drac and Fairycn, with machine translations for other languages.

Since 1.0

Version 1.2 (September 2026) rebuilt the file browsing and rename engine on a new library and made thumbnails load faster in folders with many images. See the S Renamer changelog.

A redesigned text editor with Markdown preview

2023-06-19T00:00:00Z

S Files Pro X has its own text editor, so you can read or tweak a text file without waiting for another app to open. Version 3.9 gave it a redesign.

Three resizable columns

After the redesign, the editor shows three columns side by side:

the list of files in the folder (added in version 2.17),
the text you are editing, and
a live Markdown preview, handy for README files and notes.

Drag the dividers between them to make any column wider or narrower. Open a text file with Space or F6 to use it.

May 2022, before the redesign

Today

The text editor before the redesign, and today with the file list, text and Markdown preview in resizable columns.

The update also fixed the “save changes?” prompt appearing after switching to a file that had no unsaved changes. The prompt still appears when you switch away from a file that does have them.

The window remembers where it was

S Files Pro X now opens with the same window size and position as last time. If you prefer, a new setting starts the app maximized.

Other changes in 3.9

Tab settings to hide the file operation toolbar or the view options toolbar, for a cleaner look.
A separate close button for the Settings window, so it is not confused with closing the app.
An experimental setting to show the folders pinned in File Explorer among your bookmarks.

See the changelog for version 3.9, and everything the built-in viewers can do.

Triple pane mode for ultrawide monitors, and new shortcuts for tabs

2023-06-04T00:00:00Z

Dual pane has always been one of the reasons people choose S Files Pro X. In June 2023, three quick updates made panes and tabs even more flexible.

A third pane (version 3.3)

Triple pane mode shows three folders at once, each with its own tabs. It is a perfect fit for an ultrawide monitor: sort a downloads folder into two destinations, or compare three versions of a project side by side.

Press Ctrl+H to cycle through single, dual and triple pane.

Triple pane mode today.

Shortcuts for tabs and panes (version 3.4)

Shortcut	Action
`Ctrl`+`Tab`	Go to the next tab
`Ctrl`+`W`	Close the current tab (as well as `Ctrl`+`F4`)
`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`T`	Reopen closed tabs, one at a time, switching the pane mode back if needed
`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`H`	Cycle the pane mode backward: triple, dual, single

Version 3.4 also:

added an overlay to shortcut files (.lnk, .url, .appref-ms) so they are easy to tell apart,
runs more kinds of scripts directly, including .bat, .cmd, .vbs, .js, .wsf and .msc files, and starts .bat files in the right working folder,
launches app shortcuts that include parameters correctly.

Moving between panes (version 3.7)

Days later, version 3.7 added:

Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+Right to move to the previous or next pane,
Alt+H to switch the panes between left and right, and top and bottom,
Ctrl+L or Alt+D to jump to the address bar, and Ctrl+E to jump to the filter box,
Ctrl+Shift+L to open Windows Terminal in the current folder.

More on the dual and triple pane page and the full list of keyboard shortcuts.

S Files Pro X 3.0: Mica, the Recycle Bin, WSL, zip folders and more

2023-05-01T00:00:00Z

Version 3.0 was a massive update to S Files (Shrestha Files) Pro X 2.x. Here are the highlights; the full changelog for 3.0 is long enough to be a small book.

A fresh look out of the box

New installs start with a background image and colorful icons for bookmarks, toolbar buttons, files and folders.
Mica and Mica Alt backdrops on Windows 11, and Acrylic on Windows 10 and 11, can now be switched without restarting the app. Context menus got the Acrylic effect too.
A Windows XP icon pack, for nostalgia.
App density now has four levels: Relaxed, Normal, Compact and Extra Compact.
New sliders set the opacity of the active and inactive panes, and of hidden and system files.

The new out-of-the-box look in version 3.0, with a background image and colorful icons.

The Windows XP icon pack, in light and dark themes.

Beyond regular folders

Version 3.0 added “special locations” that you can add to your bookmarks:

Recycle Bin: see deleted items and delete them permanently.
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL): browse your Linux files.
Network, Libraries and This PC, including phones and tablets connected over USB.
Zip files can be opened and browsed like folders.

Some features worked differently in these new locations at first; the changelog lists what was supported. More on the special locations page.

File operations, rewritten

Copy, cut, paste, rename, delete, new file and new folder were all refactored or rewritten for better speed and reliability across all these kinds of locations. A few things you might notice:

When renaming or creating a file, only the name is selected, not the extension.
Opening a shortcut to a folder opens the folder in S Files instead of File Explorer.
Newly created files are no longer locked by the app.
The progress viewer marks each step of an operation with a colored square for success or failure.
The app stays more responsive while creating or extracting zip files.

New ways to launch

Type sfiles in the Run dialog, or open a link like sfiles:C:\Users\ to start the app with that folder in a new tab.
An experimental setting makes S Files Pro X the default file manager for opening folders and Win+E. See how to set it up.

Smaller things

“This PC” became Home, to match File Explorer.
The selected tab’s close button uses the theme color, so the current tab is easy to spot.
A tab whose folder no longer exists shows (!) before its name.
Updated Chinese Simplified, Italian, Spanish and German translations, thanks to Fairycn, Alessandro, Damián Roig and Parasec.

A new logo and a new name

Version 3.0 was the first release with the current logo, the blue ribbon “S” on a yellow folder, and the first to go by the name S Files Pro X. See the logo through the years.

The version 3.0 announcement, May 2023.

Drag and drop is back, plus an audio playlist and an image thumbnail strip

2022-12-03T00:00:00Z

Two updates in November and December 2022 brought back features that Pro X users had been missing since the move to the new Windows platform.

Drag and drop works again

For a few months, from version 2.7, drag and drop was switched off. A bug in the Windows App SDK, the platform the app is built on, made the app crash when files were dragged, and only Microsoft could fix it. Version 2.17 moved to Windows App SDK 1.2, and drag and drop came back for files, folders, bookmarks and tabs.

Audio and video players are back

The internal audio and video players had not yet made the jump from the original app to Pro X. Version 2.17 brought both back:

The audio player has a playlist of the audio files in the folder.
The video player plays videos without leaving the app.

File lists in the viewers

The text editor gained a list of the files in the folder, so you can move from file to file without going back to the main window.
In version 2.18, the image viewer gained a strip of thumbnails for flipping through the photos in a folder.
You can set a maximum width for the lists in the text editor and audio player, and 2.18 also worked on reducing memory use.

May 2022, before the thumbnail strip

Today, with the thumbnail strip

The image viewer before and after the thumbnail strip arrived.

What happened next

The players kept improving: in version 3.2 (May 2023), audio and video play one file after another automatically, and the audio player highlights the track that is playing. See the built-in viewers today.

Read the changelogs for 2.17 and 2.18.

Paste a screenshot straight into a folder

2022-11-11T00:00:00Z

You take a screenshot, and now you want it as a file in a particular folder. Usually that means opening Paint or another app, pasting, and saving. Since version 2.16, S Files Pro X does it in one step.

Save a screenshot as a file

Take a screenshot. For example, press Win+Shift+S and select an area; the Snipping Tool copies it to the clipboard.
In S Files Pro X, open the folder where you want the image.
Press Ctrl+V (or use Paste).

The image is saved as a PNG file named ClipboardImage_ followed by the date and time, for example ClipboardImage_2022-11-11-14-30-05.png. Rename it with F2 if you like.

Save text as a file

The same works for text. Copy some text from anywhere, open a folder in S Files Pro X, and paste: the text is saved as a .txt file named ClipboardText_ followed by the date and time, for example ClipboardText_2022-11-11-14-30-05.txt.

Handy for

keeping screenshots for bug reports or documentation in the right project folder,
saving an image copied from a web page or a document,
jotting down a snippet of text, a link or a command without opening an editor.

See the changelog for version 2.16.

A finalist in the Microsoft Store App Awards, in 2022 and again in 2023

2022-05-27T00:00:00Z

On May 27, 2022, Microsoft announced the results of the Microsoft Store App Awards, and Shrestha Files Pro was among the finalists for the Community Choice Award in the File Management category. It is the same Microsoft Store listing as today’s S Files Pro X.

Chosen by the community

For the Community Choice Awards, Microsoft asked Windows users to nominate their favorite apps from the Microsoft Store in three categories: File Management, Utility, and Open Platform. Voting ran from May 12 to May 17, 2022.

Eleven apps made the File Management finalist list, alongside well-known tools such as Files, OneCommander, NanaZip and QuickLook. You can read the full results in Microsoft’s announcement.

The news came three days after Shrestha Files Pro X 2.0 launched alongside Microsoft Build 2022.

Thank you

Thank you to everyone who nominated and voted for the app, and to everyone who has sent feedback, reported bugs and translated it into their language. The finalist badge went on the app’s Microsoft Store screenshots later that year.

Microsoft Store screenshots with the finalist badge, from September 2022.

A finalist again in 2023

A year later, the app, by then S Files Pro X, was a finalist again in the Microsoft Store App Awards 2023. That year, Microsoft’s announcement named only the winners, and no finalist graphics were shared, so there is no 2023 badge to show here. Thank you again to everyone who voted.

Shrestha Files Pro X 2.0: the next version of Shrestha Files

2022-05-24T00:00:00Z

Shrestha Files Pro X version 2.0 launched alongside Microsoft Build 2022. The X stands for neXt: it is a new version of Shrestha Files Pro, rebuilt on a newer Windows platform. The app has since been renamed S Files Pro X.

From the launch trailer, May 2022.

Shrestha Files Pro X in May 2022, when the Home page was still called This PC.

Why a new version

The original Shrestha Files Pro was a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app. UWP kept apps in a tight sandbox, which a file manager kept running into: it could not run .exe files, could not show hidden or system files, and was slower than it should have been.

Pro X is built on the Windows App SDK and WinUI 3, the platform Microsoft recommends for modern desktop apps. Compared with the original, Pro X:

loads folders and copies files much faster,
shows hidden and system files and folders, and shortcuts,
runs .exe, .bat and similar files directly, without the separate add-in the original needed,
no longer asks for file access permission,
supports custom icon packs.

What came along

Pro X kept what people liked about the original: browser-style tabs, single or dual pane, colorful themes, custom backgrounds, multi-level bookmarks, and built-in viewers for text, images and PDF files. If you were moving from the original app, you could copy its config.json into the Pro X folder to bring your setup along.

To show that Pro X was the newer app, its beta versions were numbered 1.x, and the launch version became 2.0.

A new logo

Pro X also got a new look for its icon during the beta. Version 1.57 (March 16, 2022) gave Pro X its own purple and pink version of the ribbon “S”, and version 1.74 (May 7, 2022), just before the launch, settled on the blue ribbon that is still at the heart of the logo today. See the logo through the years.

Original app, from 2021

Version 1.57, March 2022

Version 1.74, May 2022

Still to come at launch

A few features had not been ported yet when 2.0 launched:

the internal audio and video players, which came back in version 2.17,
phones and cameras (MTP devices) and network locations, which arrived with version 3.0. Until then, a network location could be mapped as a drive to open it.

Pro X also took a little longer to start than the original app.

Version 2.1 followed on May 24 with a Chinese Traditional translation, thanks to TGi. Three days later, the app was named a finalist in the Microsoft Store App Awards. Read the changelog for 2.0 and the 1.x beta history.

Colorful icon themes, and how to make your own

2022-04-01T00:00:00Z

Version 1.62 of Shrestha Files Pro X (now S Files Pro X) was the biggest update of the Pro X beta since the first beta release. Its headline feature was colorful icon themes.

Three colorful icon themes

Three new icon themes gave every kind of file its own colorful icon. You switch between them in Theme Settings, and refresh a tab to see the change.

Generic icons are not only prettier; they are also faster. Creating a real thumbnail for every file takes time, so a folder with generic icons loads more quickly. You can still choose:

actual thumbnails for everything,
very basic glyph icons, which load even faster, or
generic icons with actual thumbnails for chosen file types only, such as images, where a real preview matters most.

Simple font icons

Colorful font icons

Colorful themed icons

Actual thumbnails

The same folder with each icon type, in May 2022.

Make your own

Icon themes are just folders of SVG files, one per file type, so you can build your own. The guide How to create your own icon theme walks through it step by step.

Also in 1.62

A nicer title bar on Windows 10 when content is extended into the title bar.
Thumbnails for system and hidden files, and for .appref-ms, .url and .wsh shortcuts.
Background images keep their proportions instead of stretching.
The PDF viewer opens PDF files again, with sharper pages on wide windows.
Sliders to change the length of items in the simple list and tiles views.
Sharing files works again.
Settings are saved automatically when you close the app.
Rating, purchasing and update checks were reimplemented for Pro X.

See the full list in the changelog for version 1.62, or read about today’s icon packs and themes.

A shout-out from Scott Hanselman

2021-09-23T00:00:00Z

To celebrate the launch of version 1.0 on September 1, 2021, Shrestha Files Pro was free for a limited time: a one-time promotion with a 100% discount, which started a little before the launch to build up excitement. On September 22, Microsoft held an event to show its new devices, and @AppsJpt tweeted about the offer with the #MicrosoftEvent hashtag.

Scott Hanselman, one of the best-known voices in Microsoft’s developer community, retweeted it to his followers and also shared it in his own words:

See Scott Hanselman's tweet on X

It came at a good time: version 1.4, which rolled up the beta updates since 1.0, had just gone out to everyone. For an independent app, a recommendation like that, from someone so many Windows developers follow, means a lot.

The original tweet, retweeted by Scott Hanselman. See it on X

Thank you, Scott, and thank you to everyone who picked up the app that day and stuck around.

The free offer was a one-time promotion. Today’s version of the app is S Files Pro X.

Shrestha Files Pro 1.0

2021-09-01T00:00:00Z

“Today, we are releasing Shrestha Files Pro version 1.0. This is a huge milestone and by no means the end of the journey!” That was the whole changelog entry on September 1, 2021, fourteen months after the app first appeared on the Microsoft Store.

The original Shrestha Files Pro in light and dark themes, as it looked in May 2022.

The announcement

The announcement that went with it told how the app began and described Shrestha Files Pro as “a modern dual pane file manager with tabs and colorful themes”, with a built-in text viewer, image viewer, audio player and video player. It pointed to speed tests of the app and its viewers against File Explorer with Notepad, Photos, Movies & TV and VLC. To celebrate the launch, the app was free for a limited time on the Microsoft Store: a one-time promotion that started a little before 1.0 to build up excitement, and was still running at Microsoft’s September 22 event.

It also thanked everyone who had tried the app, sent feedback and bug reports, asked for features or translated it, especially Parasec, Fairycn, Kristóf, Alur, CyberDroid1 and FireCube, along with the Windows Community Toolkit and UWP Community teams. And 1.0 was not meant as the finish line: “this is just the beginning!”

The run-up to 1.0

The summer releases before 1.0 filled in many details.

Version 0.59 (July 27)

Each built-in viewer (text, image, audio, video and PDF) could be set as the default for its file types.
An option to delete files permanently instead of moving them to the Recycle Bin.
A right-click menu on the Home page, and a choice of navigation animations.
Many design fixes, based on feedback from Alur, CyberDroid1 and Parasec.

Version 0.60 (August 10)

Pressing Enter in the filter box ran an extended search.
An option to run file operations in parallel.
Keyboard shortcuts in the viewers. In the image viewer: zoom with Ctrl++ and Ctrl+-, rotate with Ctrl+R. In the text viewer: switch to editing with Ctrl+E, save with Ctrl+S, and toggle the Markdown preview with Ctrl+M.

Version 0.61 (August 12)

Set any image as the app’s background, straight from the image viewer.
Remove a single file from the recent files list.

A guide to the app from August 2021, a few weeks before 1.0.

After 1.0

1.2 (September 6, beta): the Properties viewer could add up the size and item count of a whole folder, and a folder path could be passed on the command line to open it in a new tab.
1.4 (September 19): a general release with all the beta updates.
September 23: with the launch offer still running, Scott Hanselman shared the app as a “modern 3rd party dual pane file manager for Windows”.
1.9 (October 10): Properties showed details such as image dimensions and song or video length, Esc closed the changelog and shortcut list, and Serbian (Latin and Cyrillic) translations arrived, thanks to Bzzrak.

What came next

The Universal Windows Platform had limits that kept getting in the way of a file manager, so work began on a new version on a newer Windows platform: Shrestha Files Pro X, which launched as version 2.0 in May 2022 and is now S Files Pro X. The original app kept getting fixes for a while; the latest in its changelog is version 1.12, from April 2022.

Read every release in the original Shrestha Files changelog.

Summer 2021: tabs on top, extended search and a Markdown editor

2021-07-21T00:00:00Z

Three releases in July 2021 changed how Shrestha Files looked and how you could find and edit files.

Tabs on top (version 0.56)

Version 0.56 (July 2) added a tabs on top layout, switched on in the General settings, which moved the tabs to the very top of the window. It also:

let you drop files onto a tab’s header,
jumped to the first item starting with a letter or number when you type it, a feature requested by Yair,
fixed the free space shown for drives, reported by CyberDroid1.

July 2021: tabs along the top of the window, in the light theme.

Running programs (version 0.57)

As a Universal Windows Platform app, Shrestha Files could not start .exe or .bat files by itself. Version 0.57 (July 8) made it possible through a free add-in from the Microsoft Store. It also moved updates to the window onto a more efficient system, which reduced freezes while copying large numbers of files.

Extended search for everyone (version 0.58)

Version 0.58 (July 21) finished extended search and turned it on for everyone. The box next to the address bar was renamed the filter bar, to make clear it filters the current folder.

The internal viewers grew up too:

The text viewer could preview Markdown, edit and save plain text, wrap words and change the font size.
The image viewer could zoom, rotate, drag the picture around, and set it as the desktop background.

The text viewer with its Markdown preview, in August 2021.

Other changes:

A setting to show the Properties viewer by default, which now sat inside the tab.
A setting to stop extending content into the title bar, so the whole title bar could be used to drag the window.
Pasting now copied files one at a time instead of several at once. That was slower, but the window no longer froze when you pasted a large number of files. (Version 0.60 brought back copying several files at once as an option.)

The next milestone was version 1.0. See the changelog for everything in 0.58.

June 2021: built-in viewers for text, images, audio, video and PDF

2021-06-11T00:00:00Z

Opening a file to take a quick look should not mean waiting for another app to start. In June 2021, Shrestha Files got its own viewers.

Built-in viewers (version 0.52)

Version 0.52 (June 11) added minimalist internal viewers, opened with F6, for:

audio and video, such as MP3, MP4 and WMV,
images, such as PNG, JPG and GIF,
plain text, such as TXT, JSON and XML,
PDF files.

Other file types could be added to a viewer in the settings file, for example text files with unusual extensions. In this first version, audio and video had to be paused before closing the window, or they kept playing; version 0.60 fixed that.

The image viewer and the video player in August 2021, two months after they arrived. (Video: Big Buck Bunny, © Blender Foundation, CC BY 3.0.)

The same release also added:

drag selection: draw a box to select several items, requested by Kweku. (Going up to the parent folder then took a triple-click on empty space instead of a double-click.)
thumbnails for libraries, drives and devices on the Home page,
a pin to taskbar option in the sidebar,
an experimental custom background for the acrylic effect,
a Polish machine translation.

Later that month

0.53 (June 17): an option for solid “boxy” backgrounds behind items, previous and next buttons in the image viewer, dropping folders onto a sidebar item to create sub-items, and opacity settings for the content area.
0.55 (June 28): settings for the icon size of each view type, shaped by feedback from FireCube; previous and next in all the viewers; and album cover art as the background of the audio player.

Today’s viewers are faster and do more: see the built-in viewers page.

Spring 2021: color themes, custom themes and a new settings editor

2021-05-10T00:00:00Z

Colorful themes are one of the things people know S Files Pro X for. They started in the spring of 2021.

A new settings editor and color themes (version 0.38)

Version 0.38 (March 3) previewed a new settings editor, opened with Ctrl+P, and with it the first color themes. They were experimental: some looked best on the dark base theme and others on the light one. The same release:

added Ctrl+H to switch between single and dual pane, requested by Parasec Glenkwyst,
let bookmarks remember a default view type,
remembered which sidebar items were expanded or collapsed.

The first color themes, in March 2021.

Properties and search (version 0.39)

Version 0.39 (March 24) moved everything into the new settings experience and added a basic Properties viewer and an experimental extended search.

0.41 (April 13) added support for Windows 10 version 1809 and newer, put an icon on every right-click menu item, and added a default sort order for new tabs.
0.43 (April 17) made the mouse’s back and forward buttons work, and added Win+Backspace and the gamepad B button to go back.

Make your own theme (versions 0.44 and 0.45)

0.44 (April 25) let you add your own custom themes, with more themes shared on the Discord server.
0.45 (May 10) improved the standard and “hero” themes and included a sample theme in the custom theme folder, as a starting point for your own.

Version 0.45 also added:

Ctrl + mouse wheel to change the view type, requested by Kweku,
sorting by clicking a column header in the detailed list view,
Share in the right-click menu for files and folders.

The teal theme in the original Shrestha Files, as it looked in May 2022.

See today’s themes and icon packs, and every version in the changelog.

Early 2021: more languages, single-click mode and a new logo

2021-02-23T00:00:00Z

The first two months of 2021 brought Shrestha Files to many more people, in more languages.

Shrestha Files in January 2021, in dual pane mode with the dark and light themes.

Easier to use (version 0.27)

Version 0.27 (January 30) focused on everyday comfort:

more places to drag the window from,
tooltips for the sidebar, and a bar under each drive showing how full it is,
Enter opens the selected file or folder,
a choice between single and dual pane, and a short tour, on first launch,
a reset option in the About page,
better browsing of local network locations.

More languages

Version 0.30 included every language in the app, so switching language no longer needed a download.
Version 0.33 added a German translation by Parasec Glenkwyst, and the About page began listing translators by name.
The notes for version 0.34, which was not released on its own, list machine translations into Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Czech, French, German, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish and Turkish.
Version 0.37 updated the Hungarian translation, thanks to Kristóf Kékesi.

Many of these translations were later improved by volunteers. You can help too: see how to translate the app.

Single-click mode (version 0.35)

“As a result of popular demand”, version 0.35 (February 12) added a single-click mode, where one click opens a file or folder. The detailed list view also moved the Date column before Type, to match File Explorer.

A new logo and a Discord server (version 0.37)

Version 0.37 (February 23) replaced the folder icon with a ribbon-shaped “S”, the shape the logo still has today. It also added a link to the Discord server, which is still the best place to give feedback, and sped up folder loading by showing names before thumbnails.

January 2021

Version 0.37, February 2021

October 2020: a Home page, zip extraction and much faster folders

2020-10-29T00:00:00Z

October 2020 was a big month for Shrestha Files, with three releases in four weeks.

Version 0.17: themes and safer updates

Choose the app theme yourself instead of always following Windows.
Settings from the previous version are backed up whenever the app is updated, so they can be restored by hand if needed.
After an update, the app offers to show what changed.
The progress viewer and the log viewer became separate panels.

Version 0.18: the Home page

Version 0.18, “one of the major updates since the first release”, added a Home page (called This PC at the time) with your libraries, drives and recent files. It also:

removed the title bar to give more room to your files,
added zip extraction, to go with zip compression from version 0.12, and
let you edit the path in the address bar with a single click.

Version 0.19: a much faster app

At the end of the month, version 0.19 was described as the most significant update to date. Much of the code was rewritten:

Faster folders: loading got much faster in folders that Windows indexes, and noticeably faster elsewhere. Folders in your libraries, such as Documents, are indexed by default.
Live updates: changes to files and folders show up straight away, without a refresh.
Better thumbnails: switching the view type reloads thumbnails at the right quality.
Ctrl+T opens a new tab.
The log viewer can open the full log, the settings file and the app’s data folder.

June 2020

October 2020

Version 0.19 also brought a new app icon: the folder picked up an “S”. See the logo through the years.

See the changelog for every detail, or go back to where it began.

Where it began: the first versions of Shrestha Files

2020-09-28T00:00:00Z

Shrestha Files first appeared on the Microsoft Store in June 2020, as “a modern dual pane file manager” for Windows 10. Many of the ideas in today’s S Files Pro X go back to those first few months.

The first app icon, June 2020: a photo of a real file folder

Why it began

Its developer had long been a fan of dual pane file managers with tabs, and had used a third-party one for a few years. It had the features, but like almost every reliable file manager at the time, it kept an old-style interface that looked dated next to Microsoft’s newer designs for Windows and its apps. A search through what felt like every file manager in the Microsoft Store found nothing better: they looked like apps from the Windows XP era, lacked the features, or were not stable enough. Microsoft would probably modernize File Explorer one day, but not soon, and a dual pane File Explorer seemed unlikely ever to come.

So the developer decided to build one. As the announcement for version 1.0 put it a year later:

First, it was just a mini project I wanted to do for myself with just a couple of features such as dual pane mode, tabs, and session resume - maybe a couple months of development, and I will be done!

Then it seemed worth sharing, in case others found it useful too. Feedback from users started pouring in, the developer’s own wish list kept growing, and the project of a couple of months has since taken thousands of hours.

Built around dual pane

Dual pane was there from the start. In fact, a single pane mode only arrived later, in version 0.15 (September 2020).

The earliest release notes, for version 0.7, already list:

saving and restoring your session, tabs included,
a navigation bar with the standard libraries,
drag and drop, and copy, cut, paste and delete with the clipboard,
a safety check before copying or moving files.

Shrestha Files on July 10, 2020: two panes side by side, each with its own tabs and a switch between grid and list.

Summer 2020

Updates came quickly, often every week:

0.8 (July): a customizable navigation bar, resizable panes and list columns that are remembered, a compact mode, a clickable breadcrumb address bar, and a way to cancel a file operation.
0.9 (August): navigation items could have categories and sub-items, the start of today’s multi-level bookmarks. Drives were added automatically, items could be sorted with the sort order saved per tab, and a right-click menu arrived with new folder, new file, copy, cut, paste, rename, delete and copy path.
0.10: the log viewer and the progress viewer. An experimental tracker also kept tabs up to date when files changed outside the app.
0.11: Open with, the F3 and F4 shortcuts, and launching the app from the command line.
0.12: zip compression.
0.13: big folders loaded 100 items at a time, so you could start working before everything appeared.
0.14 (September): a checkbox selection mode for touch screens, and view type and sort options in the right-click menu.

Six view types (version 0.16)

On September 28, 2020, version 0.16 introduced the six view types the app still has today: simple list, detailed list, small grid, medium grid, large grid and tiles. It also let you reorder the navigation bar and added the acrylic background to more of the app.

See every early version in the changelog, and what came next in October 2020.