Home » Features » Plugins

■ Extensible architecture with shell extension handlers

xplorer² is tightly integrated with windows shell. There are many 3rd party shell extensions that enrich your desktop experience which work both in windows explorer and xplorer². There are many kinds of plugins available to download:

shell context menu (IContextMenu) for custom commands on files
thumbnail generators (IThumbnailProvider) for images
preview handlers (IPreviewHandler) for rich document preview
text extraction (IFilter) and desktop search
column handler (IColumnHandler and IPropertySetStorage) for custom file attributes
icon overlay (IShellIconOverlay) for file icon status indicators
property sheet (IShellPropSheetExt) extending file property pages
infotip (IQueryInfo) for file information as popup text

Below you will find many recommended plugins that extend xplorer² (and DeskRule). We are not affiliated with any of them but the downloads are mostly free or free for personal use. If you are a programmer you can create your own shell extension to extend xplorer².

If you are on 64 bit windows and using the 64 bit xplorer² please make sure you download the 64 bit extension you are after — if available. Alternatively if a shell extension you want comes only in 32 bit format, you can use it by installing the 32 bit xplorer² on your 64 bit system.

■ Text preview and desktop search

Text filters designed for windows indexing server allow you to preview (draft) and search for text in many document types like MS Office, PDF, WordPerfect, OpenOffice and others. Click on a link to download.

Microsoft Office Suite (DOC, XLS, DOCX, PPT etc)
Usually these are already installed if you use MS office, but you may need them if you have an older office version like 2003 and you want to preview newer DOCX formats
Adobe PDF (via PDF XChange viewer plugin)
PDF preview is a muddle. Adobe stopped providing an IFilter plugin with version X. You may have the functionality if you installed an older (e.g. v9.4) 32 bit Adobe reader. Alternatively you can use the older adobe v6 IFilter (32 bit) or v9 (64 bit only).
Openoffice/StarOffice/LibreOffice documents (ODP, ODS and ODT)
This is the open source MS office alternative that many people use. Scroll all the way down for the free version.
If you just need ODT and have windows 7 or later, there is a system plugin through WordPad that can deal with ODT files without extra installations! If you have MS Office installed you also have a preview handler.
Wordperfect WPD documents
If you have installed WordPerfect Office X5 or later then you already have text filtering. If you have an older version try the above link.
Sony/Canon ebooks (LRF and FB2)
This also installs a preview handler for these ebooks
DjVu ebooks
Cuminas DjVu Shell Extension Pack also supports thumbnails and document properties
Epub ebooks
EPUB text filter part of SumatraPDF
Amazon Kindle ebooks (AZW, MOBI)
Filter developed by Zabkat using libmobi.

■ Native preview handlers

For windows vista or later there are many preview handlers that work for the Native preview tab in xplorer².

PDF-Xchange viewer
Better alternative to the problematic adobe reader, will do both draft and native PDF previews.
If you install the full PDFX editor, you may need to fix up its shell extensions
Source code formatting (C, CPP, CS, ASP, PHP, XML and more)
Alternative download link

■ Column handlers for file attributes

Add extra information for the detailed view mode according to filetypes, as well as more metadata to search for. NOTE: xplorer² professional can utilize old style column handlers even in windows vista and 7/8/10.

ID3 tags for music and video (MP3, WMA, APE, WAV, ASF, MP4 etc)
View and edit ID3 tags (also property sheet extension) with AudioShell
Folder size
Show total folder sizes in a column without delays
Tortoise SVN version control
Source code versioning columns and icon overlay handler.
PDF title, authors, pages etc
If you don't have PDF X-change installed, get this small shell extension to enable PDF document properties.
RAW photos (NEF, CR2, CR3)
Extracts EXIF data (camera, date taken etc) from high-end camera photos. It also provides thumbnail images

xplorer² also integrates with total commander WDX content plugins for even more searchable file attributes.

■ Image thumbnails

See image content instead of a generic file icons in thumbnail view mode.
Note: these are the only extensions that will work with the free lite version.

Any image format you can imagine (RAW, ACE, PSD, DWG, CDR, EPS and more)
Sagethumbs adds thumbnailing for a massive selection of image types
Amazon Kindle ebooks (AZW, MOBI, PRC)
See your book covers as thumbnails and also their properties. (Alternative download link)
EPUB ebooks
Thumbnails for your EPUB book covers via CBXShell.
FFmpeg Video (MKV, FLV, AVI, MP4, MOV, RMVB, M2TS, OGM)
Icaros plugin offers video thumbnails and also properties like length (duration) for its supported formats. You may already have this plugin installed if you have the K-Lite codec pack
HEIC images
This format (High Efficiency Image File) comes from Apple and supposedly is for smaller image files without losing out in quality.
SVG images
Popular with graphics designers, this is a vector format that looks good for all resolutions.
If you want a preview handler too, try MS powertoys

■ Browser extensions

Enable xplorer² to browse, preview and search in special kinds of virtual folders

Various compressed archives (7Z, RAR, GZIP, TAR, ISO etc)
Shell namespace extension that converts popular archive formats to "folders" you can browse into (similar to system zipfolders)
Secure FTP
Securely connect remote filesystems (e.g webservers) via SFTP and browse them as a mapped network drive

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