The file manager that
keeps up with your terminal.

cwd-io. Say cwd however you already say it, then io: KUD-ee-oh (rhymes with audio) is what the team says, and see-double-you-dee-eye-oh is just as right. It is cwd — the working directory your shell is in — plus io, the work: copy, move, transfer. The name is the product: your working directory and your input/output, kept in one place.

First for developers and power users who live in a terminal and a file manager at the same time — the working-directory sync removes the constant re-typing of paths between the two. Second, for anyone who spends real time moving, renaming, sorting and cleaning up files: bulk rename, the size map, duplicate finding, folder compare and Space-to-preview need no command line at all.

Fair question, and the reason the benchmarks are published rather than claimed. Listing, copy throughput and recursive traversal are measured against the real code and regenerated each release. File bytes never cross the renderer process — the copy engine runs in a separate host process — which is the architectural reason a 10 GB move does not stall the interface.

Yes — every feature, for the whole beta, with no account. Use it now and you are a Founding User: it stays free for you forever, even after 1.0 introduces paid tiers for new individuals and businesses.

The installer is per-user (no admin) and updates itself in the background. The portable zip installs nothing and updates nothing — unzip it, run it, delete it. Both are the same app, and both have Help ▸ Check for updates.

Because cwdio is new and not yet code-signed, SmartScreen shows “Windows protected your PC”. It is not a virus alert — Windows simply has not seen this file often enough to recognise it, and every new independent app gets the same treatment until it does. Click More info, then Run anyway. Every release publishes SHA-256 checksums if you would rather verify the file first, and a signing certificate is on the 1.0 list, which removes the prompt for good.

Probably, if you move a lot of files around. The terminal features are what make cwdio unusual, but they are one part of it — renaming a folder of photos in bulk, finding what filled your drive, spotting duplicates, comparing two folders before copying, previewing anything with Space. Those are the jobs most people open it for, and none of them involve a command line. Everything terminal-shaped is opt-in and stays out of the way until you go looking.

It opens as two ordinary folder panels and you can use it that way forever — double-click to open, drag to move, Delete to remove. The keyboard shortcuts, terminal, remote servers and the rest are opt-in: the extra bars and panels are switched off by default, and Ctrl+Shift+P lists every command with its shortcut whenever you want to go further.

It installs for your user only and never asks for administrator rights, so it runs with exactly the permissions you already have — no more. It is still a file manager, so it can move and delete your files; that is why deleting goes to the Recycle Bin by default, overwritten files are kept rather than destroyed, and Ctrl+Z undoes a whole batch. Uninstall from Windows Settings, or with the portable version just delete the folder.

No. The app has no telemetry and no analytics SDK — it does not phone home. Your AI provider key and your server credentials stay on your machine, encrypted by the operating system. Crash reports are opt-in and scrub your username and home path before they are sent. A licence is verified offline, so registering never becomes a launch-time server call.

No. Read tools run in the background; anything that changes a file becomes a proposal you confirm, and it executes through the same queue, trash and undo as a manual action.

Windows 10 and Windows 11, 64-bit. macOS and Linux are not released yet.