Explorer PowerPane 4.0.0.1

Two fixes for the pane inside Open, Save As, and Select Folder dialogs.

Fixed

• An Open, Save As, or Select Folder dialog with the pane inside keeps its search box. Making room for the pane pushed the search box past the dialog's right edge, where it was cut off (#238).
• Dragging the pane's width grip inside a file dialog resizes that dialog's pane when the drag ends. It used to resize every Explorer window's pane but not the dialog's own. The dialog keeps its size, and its content gives up or takes back the difference. A pane beside a dialog follows the grip as it moves (#239).

Install

Download PowerPane-4.0.0.1-x64-setup.exe and run it. It installs for the current user, with no administrator rights. Over an existing PowerPane, it closes PowerPane, replaces the program, and updates the same Add/Remove Programs entry. While QuickPane is still installed, it stops and asks you to uninstall QuickPane first. Your settings, groups, and pins in %APPDATA%\PowerPane stay where they are.

The zip holds the same program, for replacing the files by hand instead:

1. Close PowerPane, and wait for it to finish: Start-Process "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\PowerPane\PowerPane.exe" -ArgumentList '--exit' -Wait
2. Keep a copy of the current PowerPane.exe in %LOCALAPPDATA%\PowerPane, so you can go back.
3. Unzip the download, and copy PowerPane.exe and PowerPane.exe.config into %LOCALAPPDATA%\PowerPane, replacing the files there.
4. Start %LOCALAPPDATA%\PowerPane\PowerPane.exe again.

SHA256SUMS.txt lists the SHA-256 hash of the installer, the zip, and each file inside the zip. The files are not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn before the installer first runs. This release also carries a GitHub build provenance attestation, which gh attestation verify <file> -R prisant-labs/windows-explorer-powerpane checks.

Explorer PowerPane 4.0.0.0

QuickPane is now Explorer PowerPane. This release changes the name, the icon, and where the program and its data live, and nothing else. Because the name changes, it installs beside QuickPane rather than over it, so moving across takes a few manual steps, described below.

Why the new name

This project began in October 2026 as a fork of QuickPane by lso2 (PlexPixel), and every release from 3.10.0.2 to 3.13.0.1 was published as "QuickPane (fork)". It has since become a separate product, with its own releases, tests, and plans to publish in the Microsoft Store, so it needs a name of its own. The MIT license and its original copyright notice stay, and the About page still credits the original project.

What changes

Thing	Before	Now
Name in the Start menu, Add/Remove Programs, the installer, and About	QuickPane	Explorer PowerPane
Name in the pane header, the tray, and window titles	QuickPane	PowerPane
Icon	A star	A window with a lightning bolt in its side pane
Program	%LOCALAPPDATA%\QuickPane\QuickPane.exe	%LOCALAPPDATA%\PowerPane\PowerPane.exe
Settings, groups, and pins	%APPDATA%\QuickPane	%APPDATA%\PowerPane
Folder verb	Pin to Quick Pane	Pin to PowerPane
Release files	QuickPane-<version>-x64-setup.exe	PowerPane-<version>-x64-setup.exe
Repository	prisant-labs/windows-explorer-quickpane	prisant-labs/windows-explorer-powerpane; the old address redirects

A pin's right-click menu item "Remove Shortcut" is now "Remove pin", the word the rest of the app uses.

Moving from QuickPane

The two names are separate products to Windows, with their own program folders, data folders, and Add/Remove Programs entries. Both running at once would attach two panes to every Explorer window, so the PowerPane installer stops with a message while QuickPane is still installed.

1. Back up your data. Copy %APPDATA%\QuickPane somewhere safe.
2. Uninstall QuickPane from Settings, Apps. Uninstalling keeps %APPDATA%\QuickPane, so your groups, pins, and settings are still there.
3. Install Explorer PowerPane. On the installer's last page, untick "Launch Explorer PowerPane".
4. Copy your data across. In PowerShell, run robocopy "$env:APPDATA\QuickPane" "$env:APPDATA\PowerPane" /E /XD "$env:APPDATA\QuickPane\Logs". This copies the folder's contents into the new data folder, which the installer has already created. It leaves the Logs folder behind, because the state files in it describe QuickPane's last run, not PowerPane's.
5. Start Explorer PowerPane from the Start menu, and check your groups, pins, profiles, and settings.
6. Keep the old folder for a while. Once PowerPane has worked for a week or so, %APPDATA%\QuickPane can be deleted.

If you already started PowerPane before step 4, exit it from the tray first, then copy and start it again.

Your copied settings still name the old folder, %APPDATA%\QuickPane\Groups. PowerPane reads any path inside the old data folder as the same place inside the new one, so the copied settings, and backups made by QuickPane, find your pins in %APPDATA%\PowerPane, and the copied uistate.txt keeps each group open or closed as it was. A groups folder you chose yourself, anywhere else, is left exactly as it is.

Going back: uninstall Explorer PowerPane, and install QuickPane 3.13.0.1 from its release page. Its data folder is untouched.

For QuickPane's update notice

QuickPane 3.x checks the old repository address for updates, and GitHub redirects that address to this one. So an installed QuickPane shows "QuickPane 4.0.0.0 is available", and its notice opens this page. Nothing updates by itself.

For developers

• The namespace, assembly, source folder, test project, window class, mutex, exit signal, drag formats, and trace provider are all named PowerPane. The trace provider's GUID is derived from its name, so the recording profile in scripts/trace/PowerPane.wprp carries a new GUID.
• Installer.iss has a new AppId and two names: MyAppName ("Explorer PowerPane") for what people see, and MyAppFolder ("PowerPane") for where files go. Its PrepareToInstall stops while QuickPane's uninstall key or Run value exists, and the zip's Install.ps1 does the same.
• AppSettings.MapFormerDataPath maps a groupsPath inside the old data folder, for the top level and every profile, whenever settings load or a backup is restored. UiState.MapFormerKey does the same for the group and tree keys in uistate.txt, which hold expanded folder paths.
• The update check now asks prisant-labs/windows-explorer-powerpane directly instead of relying on the redirect.
• The test suite has 891 tests, 23 more than 3.13.0.1.

Install

Download PowerPane-4.0.0.0-x64-setup.exe and run it. It installs for the current user, with no administrator rights. If QuickPane is still installed, it stops and asks you to uninstall QuickPane first; see "Moving from QuickPane" above. Later PowerPane releases will install over this one and update the same Add/Remove Programs entry.

The zip holds the same program and its license, for replacing the files of an existing PowerPane install by hand. This is the first PowerPane release, so there is no such install yet: use the setup program. For a build from source, Install.ps1 also stops while QuickPane is still installed.

SHA256SUMS.txt lists the SHA-256 hash of the installer, the zip, and each file inside the zip. The files are not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn before the installer first runs. This release also carries a GitHub build provenance attestation, which gh attestation verify <file> -R prisant-labs/windows-explorer-powerpane checks.

QuickPane 3.13.0.1 (fork)

QuickPane 3.13.0.1 changes how QuickPane's own pickers show your pins. If you already run 3.13.0.0, you can update whenever suits you.

Changed

Pins inside QuickPane's own pickers (#231). QuickPane opens its own file and folder pickers for Browse in "Edit path", Add folder, Add file, the groups folder, Back up, Restore, and the SSH key. Each of them now lists your pins in its navigation pane, under a QuickPane heading, the way Windows lists Quick Access. They no longer get the pane attached.

The attached pane did not follow these pickers. A picker runs inside QuickPane itself, and QuickPane does not watch its own windows for moves, so the pane on a picker stayed behind until a check that runs once a second caught up.

• The pickers list what the pane shows: each expanded group's visible tab, folders only, in the same order, at most 50.
• A pin on a drive or share that does not answer is left out. The picker waits at most 0.4 seconds in total for pins to answer, and a slow share holds up only its own pins.
• Other programs' Open and Save dialogs keep the pane, inside or beside, as before.

Still open

• #148 (QuickPane exits after an Explorer restart) stays open until a desktop run restarts Explorer and QuickPane keeps running.
• The pane still hides while you drag Explorer windows and other programs' dialogs. That hide is deliberate. A pane beside a window would trail it by a frame. A pane inside a window would cover Explorer's own tree while Explorer lays it out again. A narrower hide for a beside pane, during a drag of the window's right edge, is a possible later change.
• Testing. This change was checked in Windows Sandbox, with both kinds of picker, moves and resizes, dead pins, and another program's Save dialog, and by unit tests. It has not yet run on a real desktop, and a network share that hangs rather than failing at once is covered by a unit test only.

For developers

• PickerPlaces chooses the pins and checks them with Directory.Exists, one long-running task per drive or share. The first version used one thread-pool task per pin, and a two-core CI runner showed that hung checks could take every pool thread and starve a local pin.
• The checks ignore a pin's scan-time IsFile and Exists, because IsFile is a guess from the extension until the first probe, and would drop a folder named like Site.v2.
• DialogPaneWatcher.IsOwnProcess keeps the pane off this process's dialogs.
• The test suite has 868 tests, 17 more than 3.13.0.0.

Install

Download QuickPane-3.13.0.1-x64-setup.exe and run it. It installs for the current user, with no administrator rights. Over an existing QuickPane, including one installed by the original project's installer, it closes QuickPane, replaces the program, and updates the same Add/Remove Programs entry. Your settings, groups, and pins in %APPDATA%\QuickPane stay where they are.

The zip holds the same program, for replacing the files by hand instead:

1. Close QuickPane, and wait for it to finish: Start-Process "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\QuickPane\QuickPane.exe" -ArgumentList '--exit' -Wait
2. Keep a copy of the current QuickPane.exe in %LOCALAPPDATA%\QuickPane, so you can go back.
3. Unzip the download, and copy QuickPane.exe and QuickPane.exe.config into %LOCALAPPDATA%\QuickPane, replacing the files there.
4. Start %LOCALAPPDATA%\QuickPane\QuickPane.exe again.

SHA256SUMS.txt lists the SHA-256 hash of the installer, the zip, and each file inside the zip. The files are not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn before the installer first runs. This release also carries a GitHub build provenance attestation, which gh attestation verify <file> -R prisant-labs/windows-explorer-quickpane checks.

QuickPane 3.13.0.0 (fork)

QuickPane 3.13.0.0 adds a quick switcher, a keyboard shortcut that finds a pin, a Recent folder, a drive, or a quick action from one search box. Recent gains folders it never shows and a Clear Recent button. The installer now runs on Windows 11 on Arm. Both new features start in a state that changes nothing until you use them.

At a glance

Change	What you will notice	Tracked in
Quick switcher	Nothing until you turn it on under Settings, Keyboard. Then Ctrl+Alt+Space opens a search box over the window in front.	#226
Folders Recent never shows	A Recent row's right-click menu has "Never show this folder".	#224
Clear Recent	A button on the Recent page in Settings empties the Recent section.	#224
Arm installer	The installer runs on Windows 11 on Arm instead of refusing.	#215
Custom command check	A program name ending in a dot or a space no longer gets past the check that refuses Command Prompt and batch files.	#222

Added

Quick switcher. Turn on "Let a keyboard shortcut open the quick switcher" under Settings, Keyboard. The shortcut is Ctrl+Alt+Space unless you change it in the box below the switch. It opens a search box over the window in front.

• With nothing typed, the box lists your pins and Recent folders. Typing narrows the list to pins, Recent folders, drives, and quick actions that match every word you type. A match at the start of a name ranks first.
• Up and Down choose a row. Enter sends the Explorer window or the Open or Save dialog in front to that folder, and focus goes back to that window. Escape closes the box.
• Over an Explorer window, a quick action such as Copy path runs against that window's folder and selection. Over a file dialog, the box offers no quick actions.
• Over any other window, Enter opens the folder in a new Explorer window.
• Each result reports itself to screen readers as a list item, and the row Enter would choose is marked as selected.

Folders Recent never shows. A Recent row's right-click menu has "Never show this folder", or "Never show this file's folder" on a file. Recent then neither shows nor records that folder or anything inside it. The Recent page in Settings lists these folders, adds one through the folder picker, and shows one again. The list is shared by every profile.

Clear Recent. The Recent page in Settings has a Clear Recent button. It empties the Recent section and QuickPane's own Recent file. Windows' own Recent list and Quick Access keep their items, and Recent skips the Windows entries made before the clear. A folder you open again after the clear shows again.

Trace events for diagnosing stalls. A performance trace recorded with Windows Performance Recorder or PerfView now shows when QuickPane's background jobs, pane rebuilds, and calls into Explorer start and end. QuickPane writes these events only while someone on the same computer records a trace. They never leave the computer, and they hold no folder or file names. docs/DEVELOPMENT.md describes how to record one (#219).

Changed

• The "Recent apps" page in Settings is now called "Recent". The new Recent folders controls sit above the Recent apps choice (#224).
• Changing the Recents count refreshes Recent at once, instead of at its next scan (#224).

Fixed

• A custom command whose program ended in a dot or a space, such as cmd.exe. or run.bat., got past the check that refuses Command Prompt, batch files, and other programs that read a folder name as code. Windows drops those trailing characters when it opens a file, so the command still ran Command Prompt. The check now reads the program name the way Windows opens it (#222).
• The installer runs on Windows 11 on Arm, which runs QuickPane's x64 build through emulation. It refused those computers before (#215).

Still open

• #148 (QuickPane exits after an Explorer restart) stays open until a desktop run restarts Explorer and QuickPane keeps running.
• #177 (dock height as a share of the monitor) is the part of that issue still open.
• #160 (the dock after a monitor's scaling changes) is unconfirmed. It needs two monitors at different scales.
• #132 (publish releases to winget) waits on a decision about how to submit releases.
• Testing. The quick switcher and the Recent controls were checked in Windows Sandbox with invented folders, and by unit tests. They have not yet run on a real desktop. Nobody has tried the quick switcher with Narrator, over an Open dialog in another program, or with hundreds of pins; a unit test covers the ranking speed instead. Nobody has run QuickPane on an Arm computer, so how well it works there is untested. No trace has been recorded with the new events outside a unit test.

For developers

• PerfTrace is an EventSource named "QuickPane". scripts/trace/QuickPane.wprp is a Windows Performance Recorder profile that records it with CPU and wait data.
• Property tests with FsCheck now cover how custom commands quote their values and which programs they refuse. FsCheck is in the test project only.
• HotkeyService takes an id and a purpose, so the keyboard navigation and quick switcher shortcuts register separately.
• The test suite now has 851 tests.
• Release QuickPane.exe: about 1.07 MB.

Install

Download QuickPane-3.13.0.0-x64-setup.exe and run it. It installs for the current user, with no administrator rights. Over an existing QuickPane, including one installed by the original project's installer, it closes QuickPane, replaces the program, and updates the same Add/Remove Programs entry. Your settings, groups, and pins in %APPDATA%\QuickPane stay where they are.

The zip holds the same program, for replacing the files by hand instead:

1. Close QuickPane, and wait for it to finish: Start-Process "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\QuickPane\QuickPane.exe" -ArgumentList '--exit' -Wait
2. Keep a copy of the current QuickPane.exe in %LOCALAPPDATA%\QuickPane, so you can go back.
3. Unzip the download, and copy QuickPane.exe and QuickPane.exe.config into %LOCALAPPDATA%\QuickPane, replacing the files there.
4. Start %LOCALAPPDATA%\QuickPane\QuickPane.exe again.

SHA256SUMS.txt lists the SHA-256 hash of the installer, the zip, and each file inside the zip. The files are not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn before the installer first runs. This release also carries a GitHub build provenance attestation, which gh attestation verify <file> -R prisant-labs/windows-explorer-quickpane checks.

QuickPane 3.12.0.2 (fork)

QuickPane 3.12.0.2 makes one small change to the automatic update check. It changes nothing you will see. If you already run 3.12.0.1, you can update whenever suits you.

Fixed

The automatic update check no longer gives way to input (#199). One Windows Sandbox run on 2026-11-04 saw the check wait until the cursor moved. A notice would have been delayed, not lost.

This is a precaution, not a confirmed cure. The delay was seen once, and its cause is inferred. Five Sandbox runs on 3.12.0.1 could not repeat it, with the cursor on the gear, over the pane, away from the pane, and left in place across a restart. The check ran 303 to 305 seconds after start in all five, and it is due at 300. This build ran at 303 seconds in the three positions it was tried in. If a late check appears again, this explanation was wrong.

Still open

• #148 (QuickPane exits after an Explorer restart) stays open until a desktop run restarts Explorer and QuickPane keeps running.
• #177 (dock height as a share of the monitor) is the part of that issue still open.
• #160 (the dock after a monitor's scaling changes) is unconfirmed. It needs two monitors at different scales.
• Testing. The pin menu change from 3.12.0.1 was checked in Windows Sandbox and by unit tests only when this release was built. The change in this release was checked the same way.

For developers

• UpdateNotifier's timer runs at DispatcherPriority.Normal. DispatcherTimer defaults to Background, which WPF holds back while input is pending.
• Other timers at the default priority, in ExplorerWatcher, ExplorerFollowerWatcher, RecentTracker, and AppBarHost, have not been measured for this.
• The test suite still has 797 tests. Dispatcher priority cannot be exercised without a running dispatcher, so this change added none.
• Release QuickPane.exe: about 1.07 MB.

Install

Download QuickPane-3.12.0.2-x64-setup.exe and run it. It installs for the current user, with no administrator rights. Over an existing QuickPane, including one installed by the original project's installer, it closes QuickPane, replaces the program, and updates the same Add/Remove Programs entry. Your settings, groups, and pins in %APPDATA%QuickPane stay where they are.

The zip holds the same program, for replacing the files by hand instead:

1. Close QuickPane, and wait for it to finish: Start-Process "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\QuickPane\QuickPane.exe" -ArgumentList '--exit' -Wait
2. Keep a copy of the current QuickPane.exe in %LOCALAPPDATA%\QuickPane, so you can go back.
3. Unzip the download, and copy QuickPane.exe and QuickPane.exe.config into %LOCALAPPDATA%\QuickPane, replacing the files there.
4. Start %LOCALAPPDATA%\QuickPane\QuickPane.exe again.

SHA256SUMS.txt lists the SHA-256 hash of the installer, the zip, and each file inside the zip. The files are not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn before the installer first runs. This release also carries a GitHub build provenance attestation, which gh attestation verify <file> -R prisant-labs/windows-explorer-quickpane checks.

QuickPane 3.12.0.1 (fork)

QuickPane 3.12.0.1 uses far less memory when you have many pinned folders, and it rebuilds the pane far faster. It also adds a What's new card to the About page and tidies two settings pages. This is the first release that people on 3.12.0.0 hear about through the update notice.

At a glance

Change	What you will notice	Tracked in
Lighter with many pins	Less memory and shorter pauses when a pane rebuilds. The difference is large with hundreds of pins and small with a few dozen.	#210
What's new on About	A short summary of this version, with a link to its full notes.	#208
Clearer settings rows	Pane sections and Quick actions rows have their own icons, an info button, and more room around the switch.	#202, #203, #205, #207
Remote drives	The SSH section uses one name everywhere.	#204
Backup & restore	The card stays at its own height.	#201

Added

What's new on About. The About page has a card that summarizes the version you are running, with a link to its full release notes. The summary ships inside the program, so it adds no network request. The row that opens the whole changelog is now called Changelog.

Changed

A pinned folder's right-click menu is built when it opens. Every pinned row used to build its whole menu when the pane built, in every pane, whether or not anyone opened it. The menu looks and works as before.

These are Windows Sandbox measurements with invented folders. Each row compares the two builds in the same job.

Pins, windows, Quick actions section	Private memory, 3.12.0.0 to this build	Pause after one rename, 3.12.0.0 to this build
508, 3, off	410 MB to 118 MB	3.3 to 4.0 s, to about 0.6 s
508, 3, on	567 MB to 107 MB	5.4 to 10.0 s, to about 0.75 s
58, 3, off	77 MB to 50 MB	under 0.2 s on both

The samples include some memory waiting for cleanup, so a difference of about 10 MB is noise. Opening a menu takes about the same time as before.

Settings rows.

• Each row on the Pane sections page has its own icon. They all shared one list icon, which looked like the drag grip beside it (#207).
• Rows on the Pane sections and Quick actions pages have an info button beside the label. Its tooltip says what the row is, and for a section, when it does not appear. The button works from the keyboard and with a screen reader. Built-in quick actions move their description there, so their rows are shorter (#205).

Remote drives. The SSH section is now called Remote drives on the Pane sections page, in the pane's section header, and in its row menu, the same as its Settings page. A header you renamed keeps your name (#204).

Fixed

• The Backup & restore card in Settings stays at its own height. It stretched to fill the page, with its icon at the top and its buttons in the middle (#201).
• Rows on the Quick actions settings page show the same icon as their row in the pane, instead of a blank gap (#202).
• On the Pane sections and Quick actions settings pages, the on/off switch has more room from the Move buttons (#203).

Still open

• #148 (QuickPane exits after an Explorer restart) stays open until a desktop run restarts Explorer and QuickPane keeps running.
• #199 (the automatic update check can run late) still applies. The check can wait until the cursor next moves, so a notice is delayed and not lost.
• #177 (dock height as a share of the monitor) is the part of that issue still open.
• #160 (the dock after a monitor's scaling changes) is unconfirmed. It needs two monitors at different scales.
• Testing. The Settings changes and the What's new card ran on a real desktop before this release. The pin menu change was checked in Windows Sandbox and by unit tests only. The Sandbox did not cover opening a pin's menu from the keyboard, or the desktop dock's auto-hide while a menu is open.

For developers

• LazyContextMenu builds a row's menu on open. Other row menus, such as Recent and subfolder rows, are still built in advance and could use it later.
• An edit made inside QuickPane still rebuilds the pane twice, once from the edit's own scan and once from the file watcher. After this release, that costs far less.
• The test suite now has 797 tests.
• Release QuickPane.exe: about 1.07 MB.

Install

Download QuickPane-3.12.0.1-x64-setup.exe and run it. It installs for the current user, with no administrator rights. Over an existing QuickPane, including one installed by the original project's installer, it closes QuickPane, replaces the program, and updates the same Add/Remove Programs entry. Your settings, groups, and pins in %APPDATA%QuickPane stay where they are.

The zip holds the same program, for replacing the files by hand instead:

1. Close QuickPane, and wait for it to finish: Start-Process "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\QuickPane\QuickPane.exe" -ArgumentList '--exit' -Wait
2. Keep a copy of the current QuickPane.exe in %LOCALAPPDATA%\QuickPane, so you can go back.
3. Unzip the download, and copy QuickPane.exe and QuickPane.exe.config into %LOCALAPPDATA%\QuickPane, replacing the files there.
4. Start %LOCALAPPDATA%\QuickPane\QuickPane.exe again.

SHA256SUMS.txt lists the SHA-256 hash of the installer, the zip, and each file inside the zip. The files are not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn before the installer first runs. This release also carries a GitHub build provenance attestation, which gh attestation verify <file> -R prisant-labs/windows-explorer-quickpane checks.

QuickPane 3.12.0.0 (fork)

QuickPane 3.12.0.0 makes the pane's Quick actions section something you can extend, and it tells you when a new version exists. It adds 18 built-in actions, your own custom commands, and actions that work on the files selected in Explorer. Every new action starts off, so this update adds no rows to your pane.

At a glance

Change	What you will notice	Tracked in
Update notice	One notice per new version, an item in the tray menu, and a dot on About in Settings.	#176
Ten more quick actions	New ways to copy a folder, new starter files, Open PowerShell here, Open WSL here, and Pin this folder. All start off.	#189
Custom commands	Name a command, give it a template such as code {path}, and it becomes a row in the pane.	#190
Selection actions	Eight actions that copy or open the files selected in Explorer. All start off.	#191
Dock grip with a maximized window	The width grip of a reserved desktop dock can be dragged while a window is maximized.	#185

Added

Update notice. QuickPane now asks GitHub for the latest release at most once a day, a few minutes after it starts. A newer version shows one notice for that version, an item in the tray menu, and a dot on About in Settings. It never downloads or installs anything, and the notice opens the release page in your browser. To stop the daily check, turn off "Check for updates automatically" on the About page. The README's privacy section lists exactly what the request sends.

Ten more quick actions. Copy folder name, Copy parent folder path, Copy as file URL, Copy PowerShell change-directory command, New PowerShell script, New README, New .gitignore, Open PowerShell here, Open WSL here, and Pin this folder. A new file never overwrites one that exists. Open WSL here appears only when a distribution is installed.

Custom commands. On the Quick actions settings page, give a command a name and a template, and it becomes a row you can turn on, reorder, edit, and delete. The template can use four placeholders:

Placeholder	What it becomes
{path}	The first selected item, or the folder when nothing is selected
{paths}	Every selected item as its own argument, or the folder when nothing is selected
{dir}	The folder on screen, whatever is selected
{name}	The name of the first selected item, or of the folder

Write {{ and }} for literal braces. For example, code {path} opens the selected item in Visual Studio Code, and "C:\Program Files\Git\git-bash.exe" --cd={dir} opens Git Bash in the folder. The editor previews the expanded command as you type.

QuickPane splits the template first and then quotes each value, so a folder named R&D notes stays one argument. A program comes from PATH or a full path, starts directly in the folder, and never runs elevated. A placeholder is refused for a program that would read a folder name as code, such as cmd, wsl, wt, a batch file, PowerShell without -File, or bash -c. The same programs are fine with no placeholder. Commands in a restored backup arrive turned off, so a backup from someone else cannot run anything until you turn it on.

Quoting cannot make every program safe. A placeholder passed to an interpreter that is not on that list, such as python -c, is still read as that program chooses. A template is your own text, so use a placeholder only where the program treats it as a file name.

Selection actions. Eight new actions copy the selected names, paths, quoted paths, forward-slash paths, WSL paths, file URLs, or Markdown links, one per line, or open the selection in Visual Studio Code. A click with nothing selected says "Nothing selected" in the row and leaves the clipboard alone. "Copy path" and the other folder actions still act on the folder.

Changed

• A new quick action starts in its own default state. Before this release, an action added by an update always started on. Reset to default restores the same state.

Fixed

• The width grip of a reserved desktop dock can be dragged with a window maximized. The maximized window's invisible frame covered the whole grip, so the grip is wider on that dock (#185).

Why this release waited for a review

An adversarial review of this work found three defects before any of it shipped. A template could name cmd.exe through %COMSPEC% and pass the shell check. A failed read of the Explorer selection looked like "nothing selected", so a custom command could act on the whole folder. Leaving the About page during a check used up the notice for a version nobody had seen. Checking those findings turned up a fourth defect: the notice for any x.y.z.0 version, this one included, would have repeated every day. All four are fixed (#196). The review's other claim, that a batch file with no placeholder cannot start, was wrong, and a sandbox run started one.

Still open

• #148 (QuickPane exits after an Explorer restart) stays open until a desktop run restarts Explorer and QuickPane keeps running.
• #177 (dock height as a share of the monitor) is the part of that issue still open.
• #160 (the dock after a monitor's scaling changes) is unconfirmed. It needs two monitors at different scales.
• #199 (the automatic update check can run late) was found after this release was published. In one Sandbox run, the check waited about five and a half minutes, until the cursor moved off the pane. The check still ran, so a notice is delayed and not lost. The cause is inferred from that one run.
• Testing. The changes here were checked in Windows Sandbox and by unit tests, not on a real desktop. The Sandbox did not cover these: the tray menu item, clicking the notice, Open WSL here running, the PowerShell 7 choice, Open selection in VS Code, a selection in a window with several tabs, the 1,000-item limit, or the dock grip at a scale other than 100%.

For developers

• A new quick action is a QuickActionLibrary entry that passes defaultEnabled: false.
• CustomCommandTemplate holds the template rules, and its tests read each command line back through CommandLineToArgvW.
• ExplorerNavigator.GetSelectedPaths returns SelectionReadStatus, so a failed read is never mistaken for an empty selection.
• The test suite now has 773 tests.
• Release QuickPane.exe: about 1.06 MB.

Install

Download QuickPane-3.12.0.0-x64-setup.exe and run it. It installs for the current user, with no administrator rights. Over an existing QuickPane, including one installed by the original project's installer, it closes QuickPane, replaces the program, and updates the same Add/Remove Programs entry. Your settings, groups, and pins in %APPDATA%\QuickPane stay where they are.

The zip holds the same program, for replacing the files by hand instead:

1. Close QuickPane, and wait for it to finish: Start-Process "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\QuickPane\QuickPane.exe" -ArgumentList '--exit' -Wait
2. Keep a copy of the current QuickPane.exe in %LOCALAPPDATA%\QuickPane, so you can go back.
3. Unzip the download, and copy QuickPane.exe and QuickPane.exe.config into %LOCALAPPDATA%\QuickPane, replacing the files there.
4. Start %LOCALAPPDATA%\QuickPane\QuickPane.exe again.

SHA256SUMS.txt lists the SHA-256 hash of the installer, the zip, and each file inside the zip. The files are not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn before the installer first runs. This release also carries a GitHub build provenance attestation, which gh attestation verify <file> -R prisant-labs/windows-explorer-quickpane checks.

QuickPane 3.11.0.2 (fork)

QuickPane 3.11.0.2 is the first published release of the redesigned Settings window, which now looks and behaves like a page of the Windows 11 Settings app. It also adds a Quick actions section to the pane, a pane color choice, and a choice of monitor and screen edge for the desktop dock, and it moves more slow work off Explorer's input queue. 3.11.0.0 and 3.11.0.1 were built as drafts and never published, so this release carries everything both would have, and more.

At a glance

Change	What you will notice	Tracked in
A native Settings window	A navigation pane, a search box that jumps to a setting, cards, a breadcrumb for sub-pages, and a Mica backdrop on Windows 11, in place of the old tabbed panel.	#89-#96
Quick actions	An optional pane section that copies the current folder's path in several formats, creates a new file or dated folder, or opens the folder in Windows Terminal or Visual Studio Code.	#144
Pane color	Nine background swatches on the Pane page. Default keeps Explorer's own color.	#134
Dock display and edge	A Display row picks which monitor the desktop dock sits on, and an Edge row puts it on the left or right side of that monitor.	#146, #177
Drag to reorder, and reset	Pane sections and Quick actions rows have a drag handle beside Move up and Move down, and each page has a Reset to default button.	#178
Settings opens on Pane	The navigation now starts with Pane, then Pane sections, then Groups & profiles.	#180
Less waiting on the disk	Icons, pane edits, and Settings changes are written or loaded in the background, so a slow or network disk no longer stalls Explorer.	#75-#78, #163
Desktop test fixes	The dock no longer creeps across the screen, a beside pane hides while its window is dragged, and Settings no longer logs a crash as it opens.	#143, #145-#150, #154

Why three passes of fixes

A desktop test of the 3.11.0.0 draft, on 2026-11-02, found eight defects, filed as #143 and #145 to #150 with #154 for Settings polish. All were fixed the same day. An adversarial review of those fixes by a second model (Codex) then found seven more weaknesses, C-01 to C-07. The six it rated high confidence were fixed as #159 and #161 to #165, and the seventh, #160, is open below. A new CI step, scripts/check-rules.ps1 (#171), now fails a pull request that breaks the repository rules a compiler cannot see. A second Codex review, of the work added for this version, found that a right-edge dock kept its width grip against the screen edge, which is fixed as #184.

Added

A native Settings window. SettingsWindow replaces the tabbed panel with a navigation pane, a search box, a breadcrumb for sub-pages such as a single profile or remote connection, and a Mica backdrop on Windows 11. Windows 10, or a Mica failure, falls back to a standard window frame. Its cards and controls use a port of Microsoft's WPF Fluent theme, which stays in the Settings window's own resources, so the pane inside Explorer keeps its look. Nine pages replace the old tabs: Pane, Pane sections, Groups & profiles, Quick actions, Recent apps, Keyboard, Remote drives, Backup & restore, and About. Settings opens on Pane. Every control has an accessible name, and Tab and the arrow keys move through the window in reading order with a visible focus ring.

Quick actions. A pane section, off by default, with ten actions that can each be turned on or off and reordered from the new Quick actions page: copy the current folder's path (plain, quoted, forward-slash, WSL, or a Markdown link), add a new text file, Markdown file, or dated folder, or open the folder in Windows Terminal (falling back to PowerShell) or Visual Studio Code. A pinned folder's right-click menu offers the same actions against that folder. The section stays hidden in file dialogs and on the desktop dock, which have no current folder.

Pane color. A row of swatches on the Pane page tints the pane's background. Default matches Explorer's own color, and any other choice is your own opt-in, applied to every open pane at once.

Dock display. On a computer with more than one monitor, the Display row under the Desktop dock card picks the dock's monitor by name and resolution. "Primary display", the default, follows whichever monitor Windows calls primary. A specific choice is remembered by a stable device id, falls back to the primary display while that monitor is disconnected, and shows as "Saved display (not connected)" until you pick again.

Dock edge. An Edge row under the Desktop dock card puts the dock on the left, the default, or the right edge of its display, with no restart. The width grip and the title chevron follow the edge. When the edge sits between two monitors, such as the right edge of a left-hand monitor, auto-hide waits about 300 ms before opening, so moving the pointer to the other monitor does not flash the dock open. With auto-hide off, Windows reserves the dock's space on its own monitor only.

Drag to reorder, and reset. On the Pane sections and Quick actions pages, drag a row by the dotted handle at its left edge. A line shows where it will land, and Escape cancels. Move up and Move down stay for the keyboard and screen readers. Each page has a Reset to default button that asks first, then restores the default order and on/off state. Section names you renamed are kept, and the Show Quick actions switch is left alone.

Changed

• Settings layout. Renaming a profile, reordering groups, and moving a group to another profile use named buttons instead of drag and drop. Pane sections rows are compact, single-line cards. About sits last in the navigation list, under Backup & restore.
• The SSH drives page is now Remote drives, which names what you get, a remote folder that shows up as a drive letter. A search for "ssh" still finds it (#175).
• The update check runs only when the About page opens, or when you press "Check for updates" there, not every time Settings opens.
• Background work. Icons and drive details load in the background, and a finished icon updates only the rows that show it. Group, tab, and pin edits run in the background. A setting that does not change what the pane shows no longer rebuilds every pane. Settings changes are written to settings.json in the background, and QuickPane waits for the last write before it exits or makes a backup.
• Backups report "Backup failed" if the settings could not be written, instead of saving an older copy.

Fixed

• The desktop dock reserves one strip at the monitor's edge and keeps it, instead of walking across the screen and squeezing maximized windows into a narrow strip (#145).
• A beside pane hides while the window it follows is dragged, including a keyboard move and a drag with swapped mouse buttons, and reappears in place when the drag ends (#147, #161).
• Settings icons are drawn in the theme's text color, so they show in dark mode, and the Pane page's icons are back after an edit had emptied them (#149, #134).
• Dependent rows under the Desktop dock and Profile tabs cards grey out while their card's switch is off. In a high-contrast theme, a greyed-out switch that is On keeps its outline (#150, #165).
• Opening Settings no longer logs a "Specified index is already in use" crash, and each profile shows its group count instead of "Loading groups…" (#143).
• Settings search puts keyboard focus on the Display box when you choose its result (#164).
• Long inline confirmations in Settings wrap their message and scroll into view, so their buttons stay inside the window.
• Navigation focus draws a ring around the item's own highlight, and each item's icon sits level with its label (#150, #154).
• A crash after an Explorer restart. QuickPane releases a pane's content as soon as the window it draws into loses the window above it, so Windows text input cannot trip over the dead handle. It checks whenever any window closes, whenever one of its own windows starts to move, and once a second (#148, #159).

Still open

• #148 (QuickPane exits after an Explorer restart) stays open until a desktop run restarts Explorer and QuickPane keeps running. In Windows Sandbox, QuickPane survived an Explorer restart in the same process, and the guard released one pane whose host had gone. On a real desktop running 3.11.0.1, the guard released a pane once in about seven hours, with no crash and no restart of QuickPane, but that run did not include a deliberate Explorer restart. The crash itself has never been reproduced in the Sandbox.
• #177 (dock height as a share of the monitor) is the part of that issue still open. The edge choice shipped here.
• #185 (a maximized window covers the reserved dock's width grip) is open. Re...

QuickPane 3.10.0.9 (fork)

QuickPane 3.10.0.9 fixes a profile-switch bug introduced in 3.10.0.8, and closes three gaps that kept 3.10.0.8's speed-ups from holding everywhere. An independent review of 3.10.0.8 by a second AI model found all of them, and reproduced the two most serious ones with temporary test folders.

At a glance

Change	What you will notice	Tracked in
Edits stay in the profile you see	Adding, renaming, or reordering right after a profile switch changes the new profile, never the one you left.	#68
Closed panes let go	A pane section closed while it was about to refresh no longer stays in memory, refreshing, for the rest of the session.	#69
Startup never waits for the groups folder	A groups folder on a share that does not answer no longer holds up the tray icon at startup.	#70
Dialog clicks go first	A pin click in an Open or Save dialog navigates before QuickPane writes anything to disk.	#71
The tab in front, read late	With several Windows 11 tabs, a click goes to the tab in front when the click runs, not the one in front a moment earlier.	#72

Fixed

Edits after a profile switch went to the previous profile. Since 3.10.0.8, QuickPane loads a profile's groups in the background. Until that load finished, the pane went on holding the previous profile's groups, although it already showed the new profile's tab. Adding a tab, renaming, or adding a pin in that moment wrote into the previous profile's folder. Reordering groups could move the previous profile's group folders into the new profile. The moment was short when QuickPane was idle, and longer when other background work was running. Now the pane drops the previous profile's groups at once and shows the new ones when they load. Any edit on a group, tab, or pin outside the current profile's folder is refused and noted in the log.

Closed pane sections could stay alive. A section of the pane, such as Groups or Recent, refreshes by queueing a rebuild. When the pane closed after a rebuild was queued but before it ran, the rebuild subscribed the closed section to QuickPane's change notices again. The section then stayed in memory and rebuilt itself after every later change, for the rest of the session. Closing a section is now final, and a closed pane ignores rebuilds that were already queued. This is the most likely explanation found so far for memory growth over a working day, which #52 still needs to measure.

A click could go to the tab that was in front a moment earlier. With several tabs in one Explorer window, QuickPane read which tab was in front before it listed Explorer's windows, and the listing takes two cross-process calls per open tab. QuickPane now reads the tab in front again after the listing. A tab opened during the listing can still be missed in a window that had one tab; the next click finds it.

Changed

• Startup. Loading settings no longer creates the groups folder. That step ran on the thread that shares Explorer's input queue, before the tray icon existed. The background scan of the groups folder already creates it.
• File dialogs. A pin click in a dialog's pane hands the navigation to the navigation thread first. QuickPane then records the app for Recent Apps in the background, which means reading the program's version information and rewriting recentapps.txt. Saves of that file now take turns, because they can come from two threads.
• Window event hooks. QuickPane writes a line to its log when Windows refuses to remove one of its event hooks, or when a hook is removed from a thread other than the one that installed it. Neither happens today.

Known trade-off

The Recent section's 2-second check compares the Explorer window's title and front tab with the last check, and asks Explorer for the folder only when one of them changed, or every 30 seconds. The title shows only the folder's own name. A move from C:\Demo\Alpha\Reports to C:\Demo\Beta\Reports therefore changes nothing the check compares, and a visit that ends within 30 seconds is not added to Recent. Windows' own Recent list may still show it. This came with 3.10.0.8's cut in background work, and is recorded in #74.

Still open

These came out of the same review and are not in this release:

• #75 (group edits do disk and shortcut work on the UI thread): renaming or reordering groups, and pinning from Recent, still read every pin's shortcut on the thread shared with Explorer.
• #76 (drive icons and drive details load on the UI thread while a pane is built).
• #77 (one stalled background task holds up the others): folder clicks are not affected, because they have their own thread since 3.10.0.8.
• #78 (cache refills can keep rebuilding sections), only with more than 600 icons or 4,096 paths on screen.

Also still open from 3.10.0.8: #51 (every settings change rebuilds every pane), #52 (memory over a working day), and #53 (the occasional busy cursor).

For developers

• GroupStore.ScanOnce returns whether it published a complete result. GroupStore.BelongsTo, GroupStore.IsGroupIn, and GroupStore.SameRoot decide which groups, tabs, and pins an edit may touch. Every edit method checks them through Stale or StaleGroup, and an edit made outside the store checks IsCurrent.
• Every pane section's Detach is final, and SidebarControl.BuildSections detaches the old sections before it clears them.
• WinEventHub takes an unhook function that returns the native result.
• The test suite grew from 126 to 156 tests, including a port of the reviewer's two reproductions.
• The "Traps in the code" table in docs/DEVELOPMENT.md gained rows for profiles and groups, and for pane lifetime, and records the Recent trade-off.

Install

Download QuickPane-3.10.0.9-x64-setup.exe and run it. It installs for the current user, with no administrator rights. Over an existing QuickPane, including one installed by the original project's installer, it closes QuickPane, replaces the program, and updates the same Add/Remove Programs entry. Your settings, groups, and pins in %APPDATA%\QuickPane stay where they are.

The zip holds the same program, for replacing the files by hand instead:

1. Close QuickPane, and wait for it to finish: Start-Process "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\QuickPane\QuickPane.exe" -ArgumentList '--exit' -Wait
2. Keep a copy of the current QuickPane.exe in %LOCALAPPDATA%\QuickPane, so you can go back.
3. Unzip the download, and copy QuickPane.exe and QuickPane.exe.config into %LOCALAPPDATA%\QuickPane, replacing the files there.
4. Start %LOCALAPPDATA%\QuickPane\QuickPane.exe again.

SHA256SUMS.txt lists the SHA-256 hash of the installer, the zip, and each file inside the zip. The files are not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn before the installer first runs. This release also carries a GitHub build provenance attestation, which gh attestation verify <file> -R prisant-labs/windows-explorer-quickpane checks.

QuickPane 3.10.0.11 (fork)

Fixed

• While an Explorer window's border is dragged, the pane now steps aside, so Explorer's own navigation tree stays fully visible during the drag instead of sitting under the pane. The pane returns beside the tree on release. Moving a window by its title bar leaves the pane in place (#102).
• An Open or Save dialog with the pane inside no longer switches to the pane beside it. The common Save dialog applies its remembered size just after it appears, and that size change was read as the dialog fighting the pane, which sent that dialog and every later one from the same app beside. The pane is now fitted inside the size the dialog chose, and the dialog keeps one size from one open to the next. Dragging a dialog's border hides the pane until release, and a dialog dragged too narrow to share goes beside on its own without affecting the app's later dialogs (#103).

Install

Download QuickPane-3.10.0.11-x64-setup.exe and run it. It installs for the current user, with no administrator rights. Over an existing QuickPane, including one installed by the original project's installer, it closes QuickPane, replaces the program, and updates the same Add/Remove Programs entry. Your settings, groups, and pins in %APPDATA%\QuickPane stay where they are.

The zip holds the same program, for replacing the files by hand instead:

1. Close QuickPane, and wait for it to finish: Start-Process "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\QuickPane\QuickPane.exe" -ArgumentList '--exit' -Wait
2. Keep a copy of the current QuickPane.exe in %LOCALAPPDATA%\QuickPane, so you can go back.
3. Unzip the download, and copy QuickPane.exe and QuickPane.exe.config into %LOCALAPPDATA%\QuickPane, replacing the files there.
4. Start %LOCALAPPDATA%\QuickPane\QuickPane.exe again.

SHA256SUMS.txt lists the SHA-256 hash of the installer, the zip, and each file inside the zip. The files are not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn before the installer first runs. This release also carries a GitHub build provenance attestation, which gh attestation verify <file> -R prisant-labs/windows-explorer-quickpane checks.