Color Cat - is a file manager with tabs. The main idea is that for people with normal vision, color is the one of the most information sources. And for people with some eye problems (except the color blindness) and older age, the color becomes is even more important source for information.

OS supported:

Windows,

Linux,

Android (in future).

Language of development: AL-IV.

Stage: BETA. If you have not backups configured, it is better not experiment, with important files. Any time something could be wrong. I predicted you!

Important peculiarities of copy/move operations:

• All the copy/move operations in the session are always sequential, one file by another (or directory, in case of moving directories from one location to another on the same disk). In case when you copy/move some other files while such operation is in progress, new operations are added to the queue.
• It is always possible to pause the operation;
• All the operations are written to the operations Journal;
• There are no drag-n-drop operations so your will never catch your files occasionally and loose it in some unknown place;

Download (3/17/2025):

Download version Color Cat 2025-02-23 compiled for.Net . (Requires .Net installed to run)

Download version Color Cat 2025-02-23 compiled in Delphi/VCL .

Download version Color Cat 2025-02-23 compiled in Free Pascal (Windows) .

Source code are not available.

Linux version now is not available.

Changes history:

(2024-3-9), Version "1.9":

Added: Grayscale themes (background only/all colors) - not affecting color set by the session name for borders and outer panels

Fixed: Colors for buttons < ^ > in the main form in the dark theme

Added: Bell button shown in the status if the Monitor_files_changing is active (and it moves it to foreground)

Added: Alerts on monitor files events sounds, beeps and button (bell) flashing

Added: Preview sound files (mp3, wav, mid), working like a sound player (can play all the filtered tracks in the directory, in direct or in random order)





(2024-3-4), Version "1.8":

Added: File changing disk monitoring (in separate form)

Added: Filters multiline view mode (made default)

Fixed: Counting items starting with given letters when translations (from the Find files dialog) are used to short letters used in filters

Added: Hieroglyphes also can be used as first 'letters' in the filter panel (optional)

Fixed: Find files date conditions and path mask usage

Fixed: Sorting by right mouse click in files table header did change selecting

Added: Showing progress of copy/move or delete operation in a taskbar button of a correspondent form

Changed: If translations are set (in the find dialog), then it is possible to type same keys in any keyboard layout to select/deselect filters (letters and extensions)



(2024-2-23), Version "1.7":

Added: Network drives are now listed in the Computer tab too

Fixed: Size of text in the Computer tab was changing in couple of secands after switching to the top level

Fixed: Memory leak in the Computer level tab

Changed: Wiping speed increased, finally file is filled with nulls

Added: It is now possible to answer <<Ignore>> on the ask <<not enough space on disk>>



(2024-2-7), Version "1.6b":

Fixed: Could not copy a directory



(2024-1-24), Version "1.6":

Changed: Tabs scaling together with the entire form (by CTRL-wheel up/down)

Fixed: Could not copy files from a network path starting from a \\server-name\...

Fixed: While copying files to a root of a disk like F:\file.txt, a directory was created in the C/C program catalog with the name containing only 1 letter ( corresponding to a target disk)

Fixed: When a file was selected which had no inner C/C association assigned, then the button to launch it was drawn not right but at the bottom of the right side (in result, previews did not work)



(2024-1-13), Version "1.5":

Fixed: Target subdirectories were created while copy/move operation too early - even before starting of actiual copying files -- fixed

Changed: Positions and size of copy, move and delete progress dialogs now is restored to the last known (rather then to be calculated each time on base of the main window bounds)


(2024-01-8), Version "1.4":

Added: Circle between tabs each 30 seconds mode (menu Additional)

Changed: Refresh of a directory was forced after some operations like tab switching, files delete/rename

Added: Simple mark files / directories in the current directory with [+]/[-] (or, [=]/[_]) to later select all the markered items via the bottom menu. It is possible to mark the same file up to 3 times to make 3 different sets of items

Fixed: Drawing markers R/only, System and Hidden in a multi-column mode

Fixed: If the previous deletion is not finished, adding another one interrupted the active deletion

Added: Support for preview text about a directory on base of a txt file in the directory which names starts from the same name as entire directory or its part only

Fixed: Selection was updated after history back operation not immediatelly but after about a second or two


(2023-12-30), Version "1.3":

Fixed: Pressing command buttons by mouse LMB when those were moved to the status line

Fixed: Drawing long file names on mouse over it

Changed: Dragging by left mouse button with Control pressed selects or deselects files/directories which were unselected (or selected, correspondently) before pressing LMB

Fixed: Source files were deleted anyway in result of move files operation even if copying was failed

Fixed: In the ask about overwrite dialog preview for images / video could not work correctly

Changed: In the ask about overwrite dialog, sizes of source/destination files are shown always (but if size is the same, then in BLACK color)


(2023-11-21), Version "1.2":

Changed: Pressing SPACE on Cancel button in the Copy/Move progress dialog is ignored


(2023-11-8), Version "1.1":

Added: F1 works like Ctrl-C

Added: F4/Ctrl-W + drawn button to move copied/cut files into a selected directory

Fixed: Searching duplicated files in several directories (only the first directory actually was handled)

Changed: Automatic re-open of nearest sessions only for named sessions now



(2023-11-4), Version "1.0":

Changed: The application name is changed to Color Cat, and its icon also changed to the haead of the Color cat!

Changed: Menu item PASTE moved to the menu shown on the status for some reasons

Changed: By the right nouse button on the status panel the same popup menu is shown as by the left mouse buttonn click: Selection controls + Paste + Clear all + flag to skip temp files while copying

Fixed: Directory attributes ( hidden, system) didi not copy while copying/moving

Fixed: Jumping back in history to the top level (with all the disks of the computer there - in Windows)

Fixed: While jumping in history, invert control on filters by an extension did not restored

Fixed: Setting tab font to bold now only for the current tab

Changed: Some space added between first-letter filetrs and extension filters

Fixed: In the Delete progress dialog, current file name was changed only when the percent was changed

Fixed: In the Delete dialog, after pressing PAUSE button, the delete operation actually was cancelled

Changed: Percents while deleting are raised again (though the progress line still decreasing)



(2023-10-27), Version "0.86":

Added: Translations while searching files (it is possible to convert some symbols to correspondent latin characters and symbols before comparing strings)

Changed: Searching by text in files now case insensitive (and also allows translations, but optionally)



(2023-10-21), Version "0.85":

Changed: For unfinished files its both extensions are shown in the extension column in the list of files (in detaiuled mode)

Changed: Coloring some modal dialogs using the same colors as the main form colors (appropriate to the session name)

Fixed: Restoring width of a copy / move / delete progress dialogs

Changed: Asking for overwrite is shown before comparing the first pair of files suspecting to be equal (earlier the ask for overwrite dialog was shown after comparing the 1st such pair); if asked to SKIP, comparing is stopped immediatelly;

Added: Additional check for directories / disks exist before executing COPY/MOVE TO a permanent target directories set

Fixed: CTRL-C/CTRL-V did not work in the Address field


(2023-10-9), Version "0.84":

Changed: Coloring depending on a session name if specified

Changed: Background for files list depends now on the directory path

Changed: Scale factor is stored separately for each session

Fixed: Some fixes in coloring for the dark theme

Changed: Red <-> Blue channel in colors corresponding to directories

Added: Custom directory colors ( sets in a dialog, allows to use the same color for all subdirectories)

Changed: In Search dupes, it is now possible to specify which way files will be deleted (to Recycle Bin, Permanently, Wiped/Deleted or Wiped+size nullified)

Added: In filters it is possible to set a negative filter by an extension (clickin it twice)


(2023-10-1), Version "0.83":

Fixed: Deleting in subdirectories


(2023-9-14), Version "0.82":

Added: Delete unfinished (downloading) files - if there are finished with the same name are present

Added: Deleting empty subdirectories

Added: Continuation of copying of large enough (>2Mbytes) files: copyed as .part files, then renamed. If copied to the same destination after cancelling operation is continued if possible

Added: Auto-pause while copying (to fix problems writing enormouse files to SSD disks)

Changed: In the copy/move dialog, most of options moved to the menu to free the dialog space

Changed: Time elapsed now is calculating (in copy/move operations) on base of file sizes rather then on its count handled/total

Added: Naming sessions

Added: Drawing amount of available items in filters labels





(2023-9-7), Version "0.81":

Added: Compact view mode ALT--/ALT-+ - decrease/increase columns count

Changed: Faster drawing



(2023-8-30), Version "0.80":

Fixed: Nullify directories

Changed: Launched/queued process buttons at the right side are drawn at the bottom side when the right space is too small


(2023-8-26), Version "0.79":

Fixed: Wiping files in sub-directories

Changed: some small improvements



(2023-7-24), Version "0.78":

Changed: Change font size in some dialogs/forms on activation if the size was changed in the main window

Changed: Shortcuts to close all yhe tabs right/left to the current changed to Ctrl+Alt+R/L, to avoid intersecting with Ctrl+R (Run) or Alt+Letter (Opan a disk)



(2023-7-3), Version "0.77":

Fixed: Deleting in <<Search dupes>> dialog: empty lines separating groups did not delete

Fixed: In Find files window, when another search started, top line did not change, so results of searching could be invisible until manual scroll (very weird)



(2023-6-13), Version "0.76":

Added: Search of files which names are not satisfying to a pattern specified

Changed: Launching unfinished torrent file with double click calls the first command from associations (even when not default)

Fixed: After launching unfinished torrent file with mouse double click it was attemting to be opened by its temporary extension (usually not associated in the system) which led to display an annoying message saying that it was not possible to open the file

Changed: Faster copying files, showing size of copying files in progress, showing time wasted for the operation at the end of copy

Changed: Search duplicated files: colorization, additional space between groups

Changed: Find files dialog also colorized

Added: In find files, it is now possible to restrict searching by file size

Added: Splitting view vertically to show/compare two directories sharing some mouse/keyboard commands to allow navigating them synchronously

Changed: Different font size to represent file size





(2023-5-21), Version "0.75":

Added: Searching duplicated files

Fixed: Autoscroll after mouse wheel

Added: Eject drive for removable drives (in the below menu called by the left mouse click on the status bar)

Fixed: Slowing down for attempts to preview directories

Added: Previewing video as 2x2 frames collage using ffmpeg.exe utility

Added: Menu on preview area to turn on/off previwing of texts, images, video, archives, using descript_ion file and to set maximum images size allowed to preview

Added: Separate button to copy selected files/directories to the clipboard

Fixed: Sorting in descendant order in the Find files dialog





(2023-5-17), Version "0.74":

Added: For extensions .part, .!qb, etc. added to unfinished files by torrent clients / browsers the previous (final) extension is used to open files (configurable: Additionally\Handle unfinished ...)




(2023-5-16), Version "0.73":

Fixed: When moving directories, after an answer Yes to an ask if to merge existing directories, final names of destination directories was doubled

Changed: Speed up copy/move for less info on current progress

Changed: Copy/move progress shows now also amount of items left to handle



(2023-5-11), Version "0.72":

Added: Button <<Stop but finish current>> in the copy/move progress dialog

Changed: Double click to select <<Another application>> in the dialog <<Open by>>

Fixed: When another application made <<default>>, that time it was not used to open a file - but previously selected <<default app>>

Fixed: When skipping draft/temp files by masks while copying/moving letters case was taking into account

Added: It is now possible to change option <<Skip temp files>> before starting a copy/move operation, from the below menu

Added: Checking thath target file system does not allow large files (greater then 4GBytes) before copy / move operations

Added: Protect interval 500 ms after mouse up preventing directory refreshing to minimize wrong double click operations



(2023-5-3), Version "0.71":

Fixed: Sudden selecting a lot of files when mouse move over the window from outside

Fixed: Deleting Read only files

Fixed: File attributes: attribute <<Read only>> is not showing correctly

Changed: Main algorithm placing images in a collage was modified (simplified and improved)



(2023-4-28), Version "0.70":

Added: Short messages in the bottom right corner of the main window about copying/moving/deleting and copy/cut files operations

Changed: While copy/move files, these are opened without taking into acoount their share restrictions so even files opened for write can be copied - but with possible corruptions in the file structure

Changed: Shift+DELETE now deletes files/dirs permanently without any asks

Fixed: Sudden selecting a lot of files when mouse move over the window from outside



(2023-4-25), Version "0.69":

Changed: Stop opening same session when restarted even if it was earlier running two instances

Fixed: Deleting nesting files with additional options (wipe, nullify etc. was ignored and all then were deleting to Recycle Bin)

Changed: Deleting with SHIFT+DEL not empty directories works faster (C#)



(2023-4-10), Version "0.68 REL. 2023-4-23":

Changed: While previewing from the descript.ion, file name is skept if the first line contains symbol '='

Fixed: Clear all command deleted only not filtered files

Fixed: In open by application dialog, parameters stored for an association did not load into editing fields

Added: For open by application, an option added: <<Do not wait ending the process>>

Fixed: Ambigous error messages <<Could not read source file>> while copying - removed

Fixed: Calculating approximated ending time while copying / moving files



(2023-2-22), Version "0.67":

Added: Automatic opening several sessions (application instances) if these were closed almost at the same time (less then 10 seconds in between)

Fixed: Automatic scroll to a selected file in the list after mouse wheel to another position



(2023-2-19), Version "0.66":

Fixed: An answer about merging directories did not asked while moving directories (the operation just ignored)

Fixed: Moving files to the same directory disabled

Changed: To ask for replacing a file with a 0 size file, another instance of ask dialog is used then for other overwrite asks (and it has another color to differ it easily)



(2023-1-21), Version "0.65":

Fixed: Font in preview area was flickering for text from descript.ion file

Fixed: Representation of sessions in <<Open session>> menu

Fixed: Switching between two last tabs stopped working after changing a current directory in the current tab

Fixed: when file was double-clicked without selecting it first, then system default application was used to run it.

Fixed: after double-click on a file, not only file was launching but sometimes it was marked as queued to launch again when the process launched finished.

Added: Highlighting filters over mouse cursor.

Fixed: Asking question about target existing when a directory is copyied to a target via <<Copy to>>/<<Move to>> menu items.

Added: Delete files modified erlier then date specified.

Changed: Deleting files to Recycle Bin speed improved.