QtFiles

I started this project when I first made the switch from Windows 10 to Windows 11 in the middle of 2025, as I got frustrated with how often the native Windows Explorer used to crash and how poor the search results were. So my goal was set quickly, build a fast and minimalistic cross platform File Explorer. Sounds simple right?

What first started as a tiny project Using Python with PyQt 5.x in combination with C++ and combining both via pybind11 took a sharp turn very soon. I quickly realized Python's very poor performance, so I tried to improve the UI everywhere I could. Fortunately I realized quite early into the project, that there needed to be some drastic changes to it. I decided to write it completely in C++ by using native Qt. During said proccess I came to the conclusion, that whilst I'm at it, I could directly upgrade to Qt 6.x, so I won't have to rewrite components I'm already rewriting again. This step complicated the whole proccess for me - at the time a complete beginner in C++ and Qt - even further.

Migration

The Migration of the Project was a Task I definitely didn't think would take me a few weeks. It was a proccess, which turned out to be more complicated than I thought. Therefore I came to the conclusion to completely rebuild the Project from scratch, apart from the components, that were already implemented in C++, which at this point was nothing but the loader of the Files, aswell as the Search. During the Migration I made myself familiar with CMake and learned many things about other build systems and C++ package managers.

After the successfull Migration to C++ and Qt6 I decided to write some other useful things for the project, such as an extensive build script aswell as Unit-Tests in combination with commit hooks for said tests.

Conclusion

Even though the migration proccess took a long while, it frankly payed off in the end. Ever since then the Project has grown further and further, with features like a very basic fuzzy finder and continuos performances improvements. Many features are still in the making, even though the basic features, like creating, renaming and deleting files aswell as Error handling and movement through the filesystem via UI or by opening the direct path is already implemented!

I don't need to pretend, the File explorer is anything but finished and turned out to be a way larger Project than what I initially anticipated. Nevertheless it's a great project that helped me learn alot, especially about C++ and CMake.