Notepad++ Explorer vs Light Explorer

The Notepad++ Plugins directory offers two different “File Explorer” plugins, with very little detail on what makes them different. The difference between the two is very significant, and one should be used over the other in almost all scenarios.

The “Light Explorer” plugin claims that it’s “[light] not only in weight but also in speed.” This plugin is very bare bones, the extent to what you can do with it is browse, delete, rename, and assign ‘Favorite’ folders. You cannot create new files and folders using this plugin, requiring you to open an instance of Windows Explorer. I do not recommend using this plugin, while you are sacrificing many key features you are actually saving no computer memory in doing so. The difference between the memory usage of Light Explorer and the alternative “Explorer” is very minimal.

Download Light Explorer (2.0)

The second option is simply called “Explorer”. This plugin allows you to perform common tasks within Notepad++, such as file and folder creation. These two features are enough reason to recommend this option over Light Explorer. The view is also split into two sections, the folder tree and file view. This separation is great when dealing with large amounts of folders and sub-folders.

The ‘Filter’ box at the bottom makes it easy to find only certain types of files, or quickly find one file in a large listing. The name and extension of the file is separated, which also makes it so you can not only arrange alphabetically, but by file type as well.

Download Explorer (1.8.2)