I use both Windows and OS X, when I use Finder I lack the ergonomics of the Explorer. But when I use Windows I suffer from lagginess of the Explorer.exe. It isn't an issue with the file system being slow, because the command line returns results almost instantly. I know it is something else.

So I dediced to write my own alternative to Explorer. Can Electron app be faster than native app? I think yes.

I know many engineers hate Electron for some reason. The arguments I hear is that it has a huge size for a small app, a bigger memory footprint and too many abstractions for the job. Well, that is of course true but irrelevant in many cases. But when it comes to the UI, there have been so many investments in the Web UI optimisation and functionality that nothing comes close to it. The tech and tooling around web is also much more mature and stable.

I vibe coded the app, but on the performance side LLM did not do a great job. That's where most of my input was needed. LLM can produce a ton of code but it needs leading in terms of a general approach as well as in some very specific small details.

The app is not fully finished and it does not fully replicate all the features of Explorer or Finder. But I am pretty happy with the result so far. I use it from time to time when I need to check a file tree. The panels view like on Finder helps with that.

The app is available on GitHub: https://github.com/lkatartn/QuickDir. I could not make it work on Mac, and the reason is not yet clear to me. I believe it is related to the security restrictions on the Mac. It does it's job just fine on Windows.

There is a lot of work to be done, but even at this point it is a lot faster than Explorer.exe. And it did only take me a couple of evenings to build that.