File manager
digital file browser systems
A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to manage files and folders. The most common operations performed on files or groups of files include creating, opening (e.g. viewing, playing, editing or printing), renaming, copying, moving, deleting and searching for files, as well as modifying file attributes, properties and file permissions. Folders and files may be displayed in a hierarchical tree based on their directory structure.
Features
File transfer
Graphical file managers may support copying and moving of files through "copy and paste" and "cut and paste" respectively, as well as through drag and drop, and a separate menu for selecting the target path.
While transferring files, a file manager may show the source and destination directories, transfer progress in percentage and/or size, progress bar, name of the file currently being transferred, remaining and/or total number of files, numerical transfer rate, and graphical transfer rate. The ability to pause the file transfer allows temporarily granting other software full sequential read access while allowing to resume later without having to restart the file transfer.
Some file managers move multiple files by copying and deleting each selected file from the source individually, while others first copy all selected files, then delete them from the source afterwards, as described in computer file § Moving methods.
Conflicting file names in a target directory may be handled through renaming, overwriting, or skipping. Renaming is typically numerical.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “File manager” as digital file browser systems. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as digital file browser systems. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q732970. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “File manager” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.