User guide

MFCommander Help

Install and activate MFCommander, learn the dual-pane workspace, configure connections, and find answers to common problems.

System requirements

• macOS 14 Sonoma or later.
• Apple silicon Mac.
• Network access for remote connections, cloud sign-in, license validation, and update checks.
• For Infra connections: a working kubectl setup for Kubernetes or Docker CLI access for Docker.

Installation

MFCommander is distributed as a signed and notarized macOS application.

1. 1

   Download MFCommander

   Download the current MFCommander disk image from the official MFSoft download page.

2. 2

   Open the disk image

   In Finder, open Downloads, then double-click the downloaded .dmg file.

3. 3

   Move the app to Applications

   Drag MFCommander into the Applications folder shown in the disk-image window.

4. 4

   Open MFCommander

   Eject the disk image, open Applications, and double-click MFCommander. Confirm the standard macOS first-launch prompt if it appears.

5. 5

   Keep the app up to date

   Use MFCommander ▸ Check for Updates… to check for a newer eligible version.

Activation

MFCommander starts with a 14-day Infra trial that unlocks every feature. You do not need a credit card or license key to begin the trial.

Activate from the purchase email

1. Open the MFSoft purchase email on the Mac where MFCommander is installed.
2. Select the MFCommander activation link.
3. Allow the browser to open MFCommander.
4. MFCommander verifies the signed license and shows the activated edition.

Activate with a license key

1. Open MFCommander ▸ Settings….
2. Select License.
3. Copy the complete license key from the purchase email and paste it into Paste a license key.
4. Select Activate.
5. Confirm that the page shows the correct active tier, licensed customer, and updates-until date.

Update or deactivate a license

Open Settings ▸ License. Select Update License… to enter a replacement key, or Deactivate to remove the stored license and return to the active trial or Community.

When the trial ends

During the trial, Settings ▸ License shows how many days are left. When the 14 days are up, MFCommander tells you once at launch and offers Upgrade to Pro, Upgrade to Infra, or Continue with Community.

Nothing is removed if you continue with Community. Your files are untouched and saved connections are preserved, but Pro and Infra connection types stop appearing in the Left Side Bar until you activate a license. The local workspace, every viewer, archives, search, and iCloud Drive keep working with no time limit.

Dual-pane workspace

The Active Panel is the source and the other Panel is the target. Use the Left Side Bar, tabs and each Panel's Path Bar to open the two locations you want to work with.

Preview lives in the Right Side Bar on the window's right edge. File ▸ Get Info (⌘I) or Space opens it for the selection. View ▸ Show Right Side Bar (⌥⌘I) shows or hides it.

The Bottom Drawer holds Console, Transfers, Operation History, Port Forwards, and Terminal. View ▸ Show Bottom Drawer (⌃J) shows or hides it. View ▸ Drawer Alignment sets whether it runs under the Panels only (Panels) or under both side bars as well (Full Width).

Change what a Panel shows

The View menu switches the Active Panel between List View, Full Details, and Thumbnails, and View ▸ Sort By orders it by name, extension, size, modified date, created date, or permissions, ascending or descending. Shift-Command-. shows or hides hidden files. Turn on Calculate Directory Sizes in Settings ▸ General to have folder sizes computed while you browse rather than shown as --.

Copy or move files

1. Open the source location in one Panel and the destination in the other.
2. Select one or more files or folders in the source Panel.
3. Press F5 to copy or F6 to move.
4. Review the destination and confirm the operation.
5. If a name conflict appears, answer it once and choose whether the answer applies to the rest.

The work then runs in the background and the Panels stay usable. See Transfers and conflicts. To exchange files with Finder or another application, use Command-C to put the selection on the clipboard and Command-V to paste files into the Active Panel.

Create, rename, and delete

• F7 creates a folder in the Active Panel.
• Shift-F6 renames the selected item.
• F8 deletes the selection after confirmation.

iCloud Drive

iCloud Drive is browsable in Community. A file that is in the cloud but not on this Mac carries a download badge. Opening or copying it downloads it first. To control that yourself, right-click the selection and choose Download Now, or Remove Download to free the local copy while leaving the file in iCloud.

Removable drives

Mounted volumes appear in the Left Side Bar under Devices, each with an eject button. To hide the group, right-click any section header and turn off Show Devices. The Favorites header's menu also offers Show Full Paths.

Work with archives

Press Return on an archive to open it as a folder and browse it in place. Entries are extracted only when you open or copy one, so a large archive opens without unpacking.

MFCommander reads zip, tar, gz, tgz, bz2, tbz, xz, txz, 7z, rar, cpio, jar, and war.

To create one, select the files and press Option-F5. Choose a destination and a format: .zip, .tar.gz, or .7z. The destination defaults to the other Panel's folder.

Local Terminal

1. Open the local folder you want in the Active Panel.
2. Choose View ▸ Show Terminal (⌃`), or select Terminal in the Bottom Drawer.
3. Select New Session to start a shell. Showing Terminal alone does not start one.

A new session starts in the Active Panel's local folder, or your home folder when the active location is remote. You can also right-click one local folder and choose Open in Terminal to start a session there.

Sessions belong to the window. Browsing another folder does not change a shell's directory, and a shell's cd command does not navigate the Panels. Switching or closing file tabs leaves sessions running. Use New Session for another shell and Close Session to end the selected one. Sessions end when you quit the app and are not restored on relaunch.

View ▸ Switch Focus Between Panel and Terminal moves focus without hiding the Drawer. It has no default shortcut, but you can assign one in Settings ▸ Keyboard. Shell, font and session options are in Settings ▸ Terminal. For a shell inside a Pod, see Kubernetes Open Shell.

Transfers and conflicts

Copies, moves, deletions, and archive operations are queued and run in the background. The Panels stay usable while they run, and several run at once. A Transfers button in the toolbar shows activity, and flags when something needs an answer from you. Window ▸ Transfers opens the Transfers tab in the Bottom Drawer, or focuses the Transfers window if that tab is popped out.

Control work in progress

• Each row shows overall progress and progress within the current item, and offers Pause, Resume, and Cancel.
• Pause All and Resume All apply to everything queued.
• A row that ran into trouble offers Show Problems, which lists what failed and why without stopping the rest of the operation.
• Clear Finished empties completed rows, and Dismiss removes one. Show in History opens the finished operation in Operation History.

Answer a conflict

When a name already exists at the destination, the transfer asks rather than guessing. The question shows the Existing and Incoming item side by side with their size and modified date, marking which is Newer and which is Larger.

• Replace, Replace If Older, or Replace If Smaller.
• Keep Both, which adds the incoming item under a free name.
• Skip this item, or Cancel Operation for the rest of the job.
• Merge, when both sides are folders, which combines them and asks again only for the files that clash inside.

Conflicts are asked per kind of clash (file against file, folder against folder, file against folder), so answering once covers the rest of that kind instead of prompting for every item.

Operation history and undo

MFCommander records the file operations it carries out so you can see what happened and, where it is reversible, put it back. Open Window ▸ Operation History, which selects the History tab in the Bottom Drawer, or focuses the Operation History window if you popped it out.

Read the history

Each row is one operation (a copy, move, rename, duplicate, delete, or move to Trash) with how many items it touched, when it completed, and its result: Completed, Completed with Issues, Cancelled, Failed, Interrupted, or Rolled Back. Expand an operation row with its disclosure triangle, or double-click the row, to list its individual items and their results. Show in Panel opens the operation's recorded location in the Active Panel when one is available.

Roll an operation back

Edit ▸ Undo reverses the most recent reversible operation. To review another reversible operation, select its entry in Operation History and choose Roll Back…. This action is unavailable for operations that cannot be reversed.

A rollback always previews first. Review Rollback lists what will be restored and what will be skipped, and the rollback re-checks each item before it acts, so anything you changed in the meantime is left alone rather than overwritten. A rollback that would have to delete created items on a connection with no Trash says so before you confirm, because that part cannot be undone.

Choose how long it is kept

Open Settings ▸ General and set Keep operation history to This session only, 7 days, 30 days, or 90 days. The default is 30 days. Clear History… removes every saved operation immediately.

The history records the names and locations involved, never file contents. It is stored only on this Mac, excluded from Time Machine backups, and never sent to MFSoft or counted in usage statistics. See the Privacy Policy.

Reclaim disk space

Disk Space Analysis with Disk Usage

Choose Commands ▸ Disk Usage… or press Shift-Command-D to open a Disk Usage tab. Pick a local folder next to Analyze: and select Start. Stop ends a long scan early and keeps what it found.

• Tree shows the folder hierarchy with each entry's share of the total, so you can follow the space down to where it went.
• Largest Files lists the biggest individual files in the scan, largest first.
• Act on a result without leaving the tab: View, Edit, Copy…, Move…, Delete, or Reveal in Other Panel to continue with it in the workspace.

Size is allocated space on disk, which can differ from a file's logical size. These scans cover local folders. Unreadable items and excluded cloud placeholders can leave a partial total. Hover over the status bar to see what was excluded.

Duplicate Files

Choose Commands ▸ Duplicate Files… or press Option-Command-F. Pick a local folder next to Find in: and select Start. Files are grouped by content rather than by name, so copies that were renamed are still found, and two files that merely share a name are not.

Expand a group to compare each file's path, size and modification date. One file is marked Keep. Mark the copies you want to remove within that group and choose Move to Trash…. Review the confirmation before proceeding. At least one copy is kept, and files are checked again before removal. Changed files are refused and failures are reported.

Connections

Add and edit remote connections in Settings ▸ Connections. Saving a connection does not open it. Select the saved connection in the Left Side Bar afterward.

Add a server or S3 connection

1. Open Settings ▸ Connections and select Add.
2. Choose the connection type.
3. Enter the server, account, and protocol-specific settings.
4. Select Save.
5. Close Settings and select the connection under Connections in the Left Side Bar.

Browse your network

Choose Go ▸ Network (⇧⌘K), or open Network in the Left Side Bar, to list the computers on your local network. Macs and NAS devices are found over Bonjour, and Windows PCs over WS-Discovery. The first time, macOS asks for Local Network access; choose Allow.

Open a computer to see what it offers in one list: SMB shares, NFS exports, and SFTP or FTP servers, with a Kind column naming each. Open a share to browse it like any folder; ⌘↑ at its top returns to the computer. When a computer asks for a login, enter it once; select Remember in Keychain to keep it, and choose Forget Saved Logins from the computer's menu to remove it.

If a computer is missing, select + beside Network in the Left Side Bar (or Connect to Server… when none were found) and enter its name or address. To keep a share in the Left Side Bar, choose Save as Connection… from its menu. Browsing is free in every edition; opening a share or server needs Pro.

Connect OneDrive or Dropbox

Add the cloud provider in Connections, then select Sign In. Complete authorization in the browser and allow it to return to MFCommander. The signed-in drive then appears in the Left Side Bar.

Viewer and search

View a file

Select a file and press F3. Text, code, hex, Markdown, images, documents, audio, and video open in the appropriate included viewer. Large text files are read by visible viewport instead of being loaded in full.

• Command-F finds text in the current viewer.
• Command-L goes to a line when the viewer can resolve it.
• Option-Command-P toggles Markdown source and preview.
• h switches the text viewer between text and hex. Content that is not text opens in hex already.
• Follow keeps a growing local or remote log at the end until you scroll away.

With an image open, View ▸ Select Text in Image makes text in the picture selectable and copyable.

Syntax coloring

Code is colored for Swift, C, C++, Objective-C, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Rust, Go, Java, SQL, HTML, CSS, JSON, YAML, TOML, Markdown, shell, Dockerfile, and Makefile. The viewer picks the language from the file, and the picker in its status bar overrides that choice, adds the bundled log formats, or turns coloring off with None. Only the lines on screen are parsed, so highlighting work stays bounded as file size grows.

Search files

Press Command-F in the main window to open a Search tab. Choose the current folder, the other Panel's folder, or a recent location, then filter by name, kind, date, size, or contents. Search works across local and supported remote providers.

Infra: Kubernetes and Docker

Infra adds Kubernetes and Docker resource browsers to the same Panel-based workspace. Kubernetes uses your kubectl and kubeconfig. Docker uses the Docker CLI and its configured engine connection. Add each connection in Settings ▸ Connections, then expand it in the Left Side Bar.

Browse the cluster

Built-in kinds are grouped as Cluster, Workloads, Config, Network, Storage, Helm, and Access Control. Anything else your cluster serves is discovered through kubectl api-resources, so an operator's custom resources appear under their own API group without MFCommander needing to know about them in advance. Helm releases collapse to one row each.

Read a resource

• Double-click a resource to open Overview and YAML. Overview shows status, conditions, recent events, and labels where available. Pod details include containers with their current CPU and memory.
• Follow Owner links to trace a Pod back to its controller. Related Resources links supported relationships such as matching Services and referenced ConfigMaps.
• Pods, Deployments, StatefulSets, DaemonSets, and ReplicaSets add Monitoring and Logs. Nodes have Monitoring and Pods. PVCs have a Files tab for browsing a bound claim. Monitoring uses Prometheus when available and falls back to Metrics Server, with unavailable measurements identified.
• Pod and node lists carry live CPU and memory columns.
• A Secret's keys are listed but not revealed until you ask for a specific one.

Logs and volumes

Logs open in the same viewer as files: the stream spools to disk and only the visible portion is read, so a chatty pod does not grow memory for as long as you leave it running. Follow pins the view to the end. Kubernetes PVCs and Docker volumes open as ordinary file locations, so copying a file off one uses F5 rather than kubectl cp.

Kubernetes Terminal: Open Shell

1. Open Workloads ▸ Pods in the cluster connection and select one Pod.
2. Right-click it and choose Open Shell. If it has several containers, choose a running container.
3. Use the session in the Bottom Drawer's Terminal tab.

The shell runs inside that container using the connection's context and namespace. It requires Infra, pods/exec permission, and Kubernetes read-only mode turned off in Settings ▸ Kubernetes & Docker. The container must provide sh. MFCommander uses bash when the shell probe finds it, otherwise sh. Images without a shell cannot use Open Shell.

Open Shell can run commands that change the container. For inspection without enabling it, use the resource's Overview, YAML or Logs. A local Terminal session runs on your Mac instead.

Port forwarding

Choose Port Forward… on a Pod, Service, Deployment, StatefulSet, DaemonSet, or ReplicaSet to reach it at localhost. The sheet lists the ports that resource already declares, suggests a matching local port, and refuses one that is taken before kubectl would. Tick Any free port to let kubectl choose, or Open in browser when ready to open the page once the tunnel is listening.

A forward belongs to the app rather than to the tab you started it from, so closing the tab leaves it running. Window ▸ Port Forwards lists every one with its state, local address, and uptime, and offers Open, Copy, Stop, and Retry. A count appears at the right of the status bar while any is running. Read-only mode allows port forwarding. The service you connect to controls what you can read or change. A dropped connection reconnects on its own, and all forwards stop when you quit.

Change something

YAML is read-only until you choose Edit, and is checked with a dry run before it applies. Typed actions are offered only where they make sense: scale a Deployment, restart a StatefulSet, evict a pod with its disruption budget respected, cordon or drain a node, suspend a CronJob.

Settings

Open settings with MFCommander ▸ Settings… or Command-,. The window has eight panes, referred to throughout this page as Settings ▸ the pane name: General, Appearance, Keyboard, Terminal, Connections, Kubernetes & Docker, Privacy, and License.

General

• Updates: automatically check for updates.
• Browsing: calculate directory sizes and show hidden files.
• Editing: choose the editor F4 opens files with, and whether Markdown files open in preview or source.
• Operation History: how long history is kept, and Clear History…. See Operation history and undo.

Appearance

Open Settings ▸ Appearance to choose a Theme and an accent color, and to set the monospaced Font and size used by the Panels and the viewer.

Selecting the Custom theme opens the color editor, where interface background, text, selection, row background, and row border colors are set individually, along with the Left Side Bar's own background, text, and selection, and the card background used behind cards, charts, and code blocks.

Terminal

Open Settings ▸ Terminal to set the shell and login mode, scrollback, font, shell integration, Option-as-Meta, and the bell. Ask before closing a session that is running a program controls the confirmation for closing a busy session. Closing a file tab does not close its window's sessions.

Keyboard

Reassign any of the rebindable commands in Keyboard shortcuts. Standard macOS chords and the single-key viewer commands are not rebindable.

Keyboard shortcuts

Every shortcut below can be reassigned in Settings ▸ Keyboard, except the standard macOS ones and the single-key viewer commands. Press ⌘? at any time to open this page.

Files and selection

Navigating and Panels

Search and viewing

Licenses and updates

• Community does not require a license key.
• A paid Pro or Infra license is a one-time purchase.
• The purchase includes 12 months of updates.
• After the update window ends, you can keep using the newest MFCommander version covered by the license indefinitely.
• If you install a build released after the updates-until date, renew the update window or reinstall the newest eligible version to use paid features.

Your active tier, customer name, and updates-until date are shown in Settings ▸ License.

Privacy and data

Usage statistics

MFCommander sends at most one privacy-minimized summary per day to help us understand which features are used. It is on by default. It never includes files, paths, searches, connection details, credentials, license keys, customer details, or free-form text. With a paid license, it includes your license ID.

• Open Settings ▸ Privacy to turn Send privacy-minimized usage statistics off.
• Select Show exactly what is sent… to read the full payload before deciding.
• Turning it off immediately discards anything not yet sent, and offers to request deletion of reports already received.

Your files and the contents of the services you connect to never reach MFSoft. See the Privacy Policy for the full statement.

macOS access

macOS asks for protected access the first time a feature needs it, so MFCommander requests nothing at launch. Settings ▸ Privacy links straight to the matching System Settings pane for Files & Folders, Local Network, App Management, and Full Disk Access.

Grant Full Disk Access only when you deliberately need a location macOS protects beyond Files & Folders.

Troubleshooting

Find out what MFCommander reported

Anything MFCommander reports is kept in Window ▸ Console, with the time, severity, and the part of the app it came from. That command selects the Console tab in the Bottom Drawer unless you have popped the Console out to its own window. Filter by text or severity to find one again. Copy takes the selected message and Copy All the visible list. Export… writes them to a file you can attach to a support message. Check it whenever something did not happen and no dialog explained why.

For a copy or move that stopped short, open Window ▸ Transfers and select Show Problems on the row, which names the items that failed and the reason for each.

A folder is empty, or opening it fails

macOS blocks access to Desktop, Documents, Downloads, and removable volumes until you allow it. MFCommander asks the first time it needs one, so a folder that looks empty or refuses to open is usually a denied prompt rather than a missing file.

1. Open Settings ▸ Privacy.
2. Next to Files & Folders, select Open Settings….
3. Enable MFCommander for the folders you want it to reach.
4. Return to MFCommander and retry the action.

Browsing a server on your network uses the same pattern under Local Network, and Docker connections may need App Management.

A saved connection is not in the Left Side Bar

Check Settings ▸ License. The Left Side Bar only shows connection types registered for the active edition, so a Pro connection is hidden while the active edition is Community. For OneDrive or Dropbox, complete sign-in before looking for the connection in the Left Side Bar.

Activation fails

• Copy the complete key directly from the purchase email.
• Remove leading or trailing spaces.
• Confirm that the key is for MFCommander and has not been refunded or replaced.
• If an activation link does not open the app, use manual activation in Settings.

Kubernetes or Docker actions are disabled

Open Settings ▸ Kubernetes & Docker and review the Kubernetes or Docker read-only setting. Leave read-only enabled unless you intend to change the connected environment.

A remote connection will not open

Edit the entry in Settings ▸ Connections. Verify its host, port, credentials, network reachability, and any required CLI or configuration file, then reconnect from the Left Side Bar.

Contact support

Email [email protected]. Include:

• Your macOS version and Mac model.
• Your MFCommander version and active edition.
• The connection type or feature involved.
• The steps needed to reproduce the problem and the exact error message.