Absolutely Fantastic

This is a very intuitive and clean Finder alternative. The problem with some of the others I tried like Path Finder is that they try to do too much (even when there are better standalone apps for those tasks). That leads to clutter, slower performance and less screen space for the stuff that actually matters in day to day use. I saw it as an addition to Finder but not a replacement. The other program I considered and which almost met my needs was TotalFinder. In principle, I don’t like the idea of modifying system applications even if it’s just a plug-in but it seemed to work pretty well until I started to use tabs more. Sometimes you get the Mavericks tabs and other times its own implementation. It’s also lacks many power-user features.

Enter ForkLift. Any Finder user will feel right at home and yet there is incredible power in its featureset. The dual-panel mode is very well-done with clickable bread-crumps at the top. You can also have tabs for each pane (although I’d have liked a more aesthetic divider) and move them all wherever you want. You may think opening two Finder windows and using drag & drop isn’t much different than using a dual-pane interface but actually it’s not even close. It requires way more clicks, window-positioning, takes more screen real-estate due to control duplication and unless you have a large enough monitor, you won’t even see everything. With that said, I do like how Mavericks implements tabs in the Finder. It’s smart that tabs expand and contract based on how many there are since it makes the tabs bigger targets when you don’t have a lot.

Forklift also streamlines many common tasks. You can quickly compress files even to 7-zip and archives can be browsed as folders. When you drag an app to the trash it shows you related files (like AppZapper) and can cleanly uninstall it. You can save workspaces with your dual panes and tabs all set to whatever folders you wish. It seems I discover another convenient feature every time I use it. Plus, it’s great for managing remote files via FTP and other protocols. It’s such a natural extension of the program and feels completely transparent. However, by far the biggest selling point for me was the CLEAN interface, SPEED, and STABILITY.

Things I’d like:
Cut & Paste
Spring-Loaded Folders & Tabs or similar (for example when I drag an item onto a folder and it highlights that folder, perhaps Space could activate going inside it… )

exigentsky about ForkLift - File Manager and FTP/SFTP/WebDAV/Amazon S3 client