Light Explorer is a free File Explorer Plugin For Notepad++ to add file explorer to Notepad++. This plugin creates a Navigation bar on the left site of Notepad++ which lets you quickly navigate the entire hard drive and networks connected to the LAN to open the desired files. After using this plugin, you don’t have to open “File option” from the menu bar repeatedly to navigate the different location in your computer, just keep this explorer sidebar open, and double click on any file to open it in Notepad++.
It comes with some useful features like add a folder to favorites, and search for text in a given location.
How In Install This File Explorer Notepad++ Plugin
You can install this plugin from the Plugin Manager of the Notepad++. For that, go to Notepad++ Menu bar –> Plugins ->Plugin manager -> Show Plugin Manager -> Light Explorer and click on the Install button. See Screenshot below for details:
You need to have Notepad++ already installed in your computer to use this plugin, in case you don’t have, download it from here.
How To Navigate Files Using This File Explorer Notepad++ Plugin
After Installation, you can use this plugin from Plugins option of Notepad++. For that, go to Notepad++ Menu bar -> Plugins –> Light Explorer, or Simply press Alt + A (hotkey). On left of notepad++, you will see a newly added navigation bar.
It will display the list of navigated files and folders available in your computer. Double click on any supported file, and it will quickly open up in your Notepad++ on right side.
This navigation bar also provides some other good features. It provides Favorites folder feature where you can add all your folders containing your important work. Favorite folder lets you quickly fetch your files without navigating the whole computer repeatedly to find a particular folder.
To add the folder to favorites, simply right-click on the folder and select Add to favorites from the context menu. See screenshot above for details.
Notepad++ already comes with a feature to search for any text within opened files, or even any folder on disk. This File Explorer plugin for Notepad++ makes that process easier. Just select any text that you want to search for, right click on folder in which you want to search for that text, and select “Search From here”.
Notepad++ will search for that text in all files in that folder and will show you results at bottom of the screen.
“Open command line here” and “Synchronize Tree with current document” are other features.
- Open command line here opens the command prompt, at the selected folder path.
- Synchronize tree with current document is used to navigate to the currently open document in File Explorer on left side. It can be useful to find your text file’s location in the computer.
Some other useful Notepad++ plugin are NppDocShare, Compare, Emmet, and Customize Toolbar.
Conclusion
Light Explorer is a very useful plugin for Notepad++ that lets you add a File Explorer within Notepad++. Of course, you can browse any file by going to the File menu as well, but in case you want to edit lot of files, then you can use this File Explorer to navigate to any file quickly and open in Notepad++. My favorite feature in this plugin is “Favorites” feature, which lets me add my most frequently accessed folders to Favorites.
If you are a heavy user of Notepad++, you should definitely try this out.
You can download this plugin from Plugin Manager of Notepad++, or externally from here.