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Windows 10: Now you can get 1990s Windows File Manager from Microsoft Store

Microsoft publishes the Windows File Manager from the 1990s in its app store.
Written by Liam Tung, Contributing Writer

Microsoft has published its revived and open-sourced Windows File Manager from Windows 3.0 in the Microsoft Store. 

The new app is for fans of the look and feel of File Manager in Windows in the early 1990s. The Windows File Manager was the first graphical interface for managing and accessing files. 

It was replaced with Windows Explorer in Windows NT 4.0, although File Manager was still available on that version of Windows.    

Last year, a few months before Microsoft bought GitHub, the company open-sourced the retro File Manager and published its source code on GitHub with updates to make it run on Windows 10.  

The File Manager app for Windows 10 is a labor of love by Craig Wittenberg, an engineer who's worked for Microsoft for nearly 37 years on everything from Word for Windows 2.0 to machine learning for security and Azure, according to his LinkedIn profile

Wittenberg copied it from Windows NT 4.0 source code in 2007 and has largely left the look and feel the same. 

SEE: 20 pro tips to make Windows 10 work the way you want (free PDF)

File Manager version 10 for Windows 10 has VS OLE drag-and-drop support, while Ctrl+C, Ctrl+ X, Ctrl+V map to today's shortcuts for copy, cut, and paste, rather than the older Ctrl+C for changing drives.

A more recent change before releasing the app on the Microsoft Store was adding ^w as a short cut for windows close.

Reviews of the app on the Microsoft Store have largely been positive, leaving it with a current 4.5 out of 5 star rating. 

The app was previously available for download from GitHub, but now Windows 10 users can easily install it from Microsoft's app store. 

windowsfilemanager.jpg

The new app is for fans of the look and feel of File Manager in Windows in the early 1990s.

Image: Microsoft/Wikimedia

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