The Windows Explorer receives much less praise than it deserves, it is one of the most complete and powerful tools of the windows operating system and that significantly improves with each version. If you have used other file managers on other operating systems, you can not deny that as nice as they look, they do not let you do everything that Windows does.

In Windows 10 several new things were included that make the explorer even better and that few users take advantage. Today we are going to teach you several of them, we are going to give you some tips to squeeze the explorer to the maximum and also we will tell you how you can change their appearance, add extra things or remove the ones that you do not like.

Add tabs to Windows Explorer

This is something that some Linux users are already accustomed to, and anyone who has used a web browser in their life will seem super practical. There is an application called Clover that adds tabs to the Windows Explorer .

It works from Windows XP to Windows 10. It is free, and not only lets you open several folders within a single window thanks to the use of tabs very similar to those of Chrome or Firefox, but it lets you add favorites to a bar , or change The theme for a compatible with Google Chrome.

You can use the keyboard shortcut CTRL + T to open new tabs , with CTRL + W close tabs, and with CTRL + Tab switch between the different tabs. If you prefer to use your keyboard than the mouse, you will save some time between tasks.

Restart the Explorer in case of emergency

While we said that Windows Explorer is very good, we did not say it was perfect. If something knows all the users of this operating system is the curse of crashes and applications that stop responding , the Explorer is one of the most suffering from this evil.

At Microsoft they know, and that is why from Windows 8 added a button especially dedicated to restart Windows Explorer from the Task Manager. Just right click on the start button and select the Administrator, or use the keyboard shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + ESC.

From there on the Processes tab, find the Windows Explorer in the list of active applications, select it and then click the “Restart” button that appears below and to the right.

View advanced audio and video information

With the MediaTab add-on you can get detailed information of media files simply by right clicking on them. You’ll be able to know things like codec, bitrate, resolution, coding options, metadata and more without having to open a separate application.

Hide frequent access folders

In Windows 10 a new feature was added to the section of the Windows explorer called “Quick Access”. Each time the system detects that you open a lot of folders, it automatically adds them to that list. This sometimes generates very long and somewhat annoying lists. It may be that one day I opened a folder a lot, but it does not mean that I want a direct access to it forever.

Luckily, we can disable this so that it looks more like the favorites that appeared in the browser in Windows 8. To do this we have to open the browser folder options :

Now in the Privacy options on the General tab, uncheck the “Show recently used files or folders in Quick Access” check box.

You can also use it to change the behavior of the browser when you first start it . By default it opens in Quick Access, but you can choose to start on This computer, or the equivalent of the old “My Computer”.

Change view type quickly

You probably know that by right clicking inside any folder in Windows Explorer you open a context menu to change how the icons look. You know, small, medium, large, very large, mosaics, content or details.

What you may not know is that you do not have to make a single click to navigate between all those views, all you have to do is press the CTRL key and move the mouse wheel. The GIF above clearly shows it.

Rename multiple files at once

Renaming files in Windows Explorer is easier than some believe, if you know how to use the tool well, you will save many, many clicks. If for example you want to change the name of several files at once for different things, just right click on it and choose “Rename” from the context menu that appears.

An even simpler way is to left-click softly on the file and wait a second for the name to be editable. When you have changed the name you do not have to press Enter, you do not have to make another click, simply press the TAB key to pass the next file and rename it directly.

You can also select multiple files at once, right-click, select “Rename” and choose a name for them, Windows Explorer will automatically add a number in parentheses to each item to differentiate them.

Add the option to send files to other devices

One of the most useful applications I have come across in this life is called Pushbullet. This simple tool allows us to send files, notes, links, and images between different devices.

If you download the Windows version, it will integrate with Windows Explorer so that every time you right click on any file, you will have the option to send it to your tablet, smartphone, other computer, another browser, a friend, etc. And it will receive it as a push notification. It can be incredibly convenient.

Do advanced searches

If you usually handle a lot of documents on your computer and there are so many that you always have trouble finding things at first, you probably need more help to use the search function in Windows Explorer.

For example something simple is that from the search box you can search files according to the size and date of modification, but you may not know the different operators to do advanced searches that can be used in it.

For example, the “AND” operator is used to search for files that contain two specific words . “Presentation AND Mayo” will look for files that contain the words “Presentation” and “May” in the name regardless of where they are in the file.

The operator “NOT” does the opposite, “Presentation NOT Mayo” will search for files that contain the word “Presentation” and will exclude all those that also contain the word “Mayo”. The “OR” operator will search for files that contain any of the two search terms, together or separately.

Delete search history

If for any reason you would like to delete the search history from Windows File Explorer, you can do so. Normally the browser remembers all the searches you have done before and when you start typing something in the drawer suggests past searches , this can be very useful and save time, but if you share the computer with someone you could have your reasons for wanting Erase it.

To do this open the File Explorer, click inside the search box and then “Search” under the “Search tools” tab. Then click on “Recent searches” and there will be the option to delete the history.

Make the Windows 10 browser look more like Windows 7

If you do not like the so called ribbon menu that first appeared in Windows 8 and added a lot of additional options to the file explorer at the top, you can get rid of it with a tool called OldNewExplorer that makes your browser look like More than Windows 7.

I personally prefer it this way because I like to change the Windows theme and the ribbon menu never goes well with anything, besides I never use it and never miss it. As you can see in the image above, the browser window with OldNewExplorer installed, looks much simpler than the other screenshots in this article where it was disabled.

OldNewExplorer has several options, not only changes some aesthetic aspects, but it allows you to bring back the libraries to Windows 10, if you liked that organization of the files.