cwdio is a two-panel file manager in the Norton, Total Commander and Midnight Commander line: two folders side by side, one active, and every copy or move goes from the active one to the other. Around those two panels sits a dockable workspace — terminals, the folder tree, git views, a preview pane and the AI assistant — all closed until you open them, so on first launch you see two folders and nothing else.
What it does
- Two panels, always left and right. Tab switches between them; Ctrl+U swaps the folders they show. Each panel has its own breadcrumb address bar, back/forward history with a drop-down of recent locations, drive selector, sort order and columns.
- Folder tabs per panel. Ctrl+T duplicates the current folder into a new tab, Ctrl+W closes, Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab cycle. Tabs carry their own history, can be pinned, reordered by drag, moved to the other side, and reopened after closing (Go ▸ Reopen closed tab).
- A dockable workspace. Terminals, Locations (drives, servers, favourites, the folder tree), the Quick View pane, Git changes, Git history, Web preview and the AI assistant are dock panels: drag them beside, below or on top of the file panels, close them with their tab ×, or collapse them to a thin edge rail and click the rail to bring them back.
- Presets and reset. The status-bar chip switches between named tool-window sets (Orthodox, Commander, Explorer, Cull, Developer); Ctrl+Alt+0 resets to the two-panel default. Go ▸ Saved layouts… stores a named pair of folders with each panel’s tabs and restores it later.
- More windows. Ctrl+Shift+N opens another cwdio window; the Explorer context-menu entry and the
command line (
cwdio <path>) open a folder in a new window too. - Appearance. Dark and light themes, seven accent presets, and an English or Ukrainian interface — all in Preferences ▸ Appearance and remembered across restarts.
How to use it
- Put the folder you are working from in one panel and the folder you are working to in the other. Go ▸ Open folder in other panel sends the inactive panel to where the active one is.
- F5 copies the selection to the other panel, F6 moves it — no target to type.
- Open as many tabs as the job needs with Ctrl+T; middle-click a folder to open it in a background tab; right-click a tab for Duplicate, Pin, Close others and Move to other panel.
- Need a terminal? Ctrl+`. Need the folder tree? Ctrl+Shift+E. Close them again and the two panels are all that is left.
What is remembered
Everything about the workspace persists: the dock layout, each side’s tabs and active folder, which tool windows are open, collapsed to a rail or closed, panel columns and widths, sort order, the theme, accent and language, plus the list of recently closed tabs. Only the primary window’s size and position are saved; a second window cascades from the first and is not remembered. A corrupt or partial settings file never throws — the good fields are kept and the rest fall back to defaults.
What it deliberately does not do
- It does not offer a third or fourth panel. The two-panel invariant is what makes “copy to the other panel” unambiguous; use tabs, a second window, or single-pane mode instead.
- Tool windows do not pop out into separate OS windows. They dock and rail inside the cwdio window.
- Both sides can be hidden — an empty work area with a full-screen terminal is allowed. The View ▸ Panels list and the edge rails bring them back.
Related
- Terminal sync — the terminal that lives in this workspace and follows the panel.
- Views, columns and thumbnails — what each panel can show.
- Command palette and keyboard — every panel and tab command by chord.