Clean up any folder
without leaving Explorer.
Right-click a folder, hit Clean this folder, then swipe through its contents with live previews and keyboard shortcuts: keep, reject, rename, and commit in one pass. Browse into subfolders without leaving the app, and your keep/reject marks travel with you.
Per-user install, no admin prompt. Del sends to the Recycle Bin, never permanent deletion.
Swipe through a folder
Sort a folder like a dating app: keep the good, reject the junk. Nothing happens to your files until you have reviewed both piles and applied them with one click. Anything you skip stays untouched.
One last look before anything happens
✓ Keep (2)
🎬 🖼✗ Reject (1)
🖼Drag with the mouse, or stay on the keyboard: ← reject · → keep · ↓ skip · Backspace rewind.
What it does
Previews, filters, folder sizes, and keyboard-first flows. Your files stay on your machine; the only network call is the update check, which you can switch off in Settings.
Swipe-to-triage
Review files one at a time like a dating app: swipe or ←/→ to reject or keep, ↓ to skip. Nothing touches the disk until you Commit. A review screen shows both piles so you can swap or unmark any file, then you choose what happens: send rejects to the Recycle Bin or leave them alone, and move or copy the keepers to a folder of your choice. One Ctrl+Z reverses the whole commit.
Explorer context menu
“Clean this folder” on folders and folder backgrounds. Per-user, no admin required.
Browse in place
Enter or double-click a folder to go into it, with back, forward and up buttons, a clickable breadcrumb, and Alt+←/→/↑ on the keyboard. Step up and back down and you land on the file you left.
Marks that span folders
Keep and reject decisions follow you from folder to folder. A toolbar pill counts what is still pending, and the commit dialog breaks it down per folder so you can apply everything at once or only the folder you are in.
Folder sizes
The Size column shows what each subfolder holds, counted in the background so a big tree ticks upward instead of sitting blank. Sort by Size to put the heaviest folders on top, which is usually where the cleaning starts.
Live previews
Images render natively, video and audio play inline, and PDFs open in the built-in viewer.
Scrub timeline
Video previews come with play/pause, elapsed and total time, and a draggable slider to jump anywhere in the clip.
Preview details
A strip under the preview shows the selected file’s metadata: type, size, resolution, length, frame rate, bit rate, created and modified dates. Select a folder and it shows how many items are inside. Toggle each one on or off in Settings.
Quick rename
Type a name, press Enter, jump to the next file. Collisions auto-number (Clip, Clip 2…) and the extension is preserved.
Quick-use buttons
Build a name in one click from your own reusable buttons, plus dynamic buttons for today’s date or the file’s created date. Both formats are configurable in Settings.
Keyboard-first
Del to Recycle Bin, F2 rename, Enter open, K/X/U flag, Alt+arrows to move between folders. A whole pass without the mouse.
One-key undo
Ctrl+Z puts back the last rename, delete, or commit. Files come straight out of the Recycle Bin, with no digging through it yourself.
Filter & sort
Filter by name and toggle file types on or off. Sort by name, size, date, or type, with folders always first.
Safe by default
Deletes go to the Recycle Bin, never a permanent wipe. Multi-select to clear several at once.
Always up to date
When a new release ships, an update button appears in the toolbar. On an installed copy, one click downloads it, installs silently, and restarts the app right where you were. The portable build opens the release page instead. Toggleable in Settings.
How a pass goes
It lives in the menu you already use, with nothing to set up first.
Right-click a folder
Pick Clean this folder from the Explorer context menu (or the background of an open folder).
Swipe through it
Preview each file and flag it keep or reject, by swipe, ←/→, or K/X. Step into a subfolder and keep going; the marks come with you. Rename a run of clips with Enter along the way.
Commit once
Review both piles, then Commit: send rejects to the Recycle Bin (or leave them), and move or copy the keepers to a folder you choose.
Undo mistakes
Ctrl+Z reverses the last rename, delete, or the whole commit, however many files it covered.
Install
Grab the installer, or run from source.
⬇ Installer (recommended)
Download ExplorerHelper-Setup-*.exe from the latest release and run it. It installs per-user (no admin prompt) and registers the context-menu entries. Uninstalling removes them again. From here the app keeps itself up to date with one-click updates.
A portable zip is published with every release too; use the Add context menu button inside the app. The portable build points you at the release page for updates rather than installing them itself.
🛠 Build from source
Requires the .NET SDK 8 or newer.
# Debug run
dotnet run --project src/ExplorerHelper
# Publish self-contained exe + portable zip
# (version comes from Directory.Build.props)
./build.ps1