CannonCommander

The most beautiful file manager you will ever run. Also the only one you need.

What is this?

Two panels side by side, F5 to copy from one to the other, and an interface so polished you will catch yourself tidying folders just to look at it. CannonCommander runs on your server in the browser, with no desktop squeezed into a container, and on your desk as an app for Windows, macOS and Linux. It knows its way around your server: which files still sit on the cache and which on the array, which disks are asleep, the parity check and the permissions your shares expect. Remote storage comes in through rclone, and a built-in MCP server lets an AI assistant work with your files under your own rights.

The folders and files in these pictures are made up.

Tabs in both panels, and badges for the files that still sit on the cache

Copies run as jobs in the background, and a hard link saves the space where Unraid allows one

The preview pane shows the file under the cursor, with the camera data of a photo

Highlights & Features

• Two panels with tabs, a menu bar, a command search on Ctrl+K and the keys the classic commanders taught your fingers: F3 views, F4 edits, F5 copies, F6 moves, F7 makes a folder and F8 deletes

• Copies, moves and deletes run as jobs in the background, with speed, time left, pause, a speed limit and a rule for files that already exist, and they pick up again after a restart

• Deleted files go to a trash on the same share first, and the last actions can be undone

• Unraid in view: a badge on files that still sit on the cache, a warning before a copy wakes a sleeping disk, the parity check in the sidebar, and Set permissions the Unraid way to hand files to nobody:users

• Nine views per tab, quick look on the space bar and a preview in the other panel

• Folder compare and sync, file compare, duplicates, disk usage as a tree or a treemap, batch rename with patterns, archives, checksums, split and join

• A viewer and editor for pictures, video, audio, PDF, Markdown, code, Office files, e-books and 3D models, and an Office server of your own can edit Office files

• SFTP, SMB, WebDAV, S3, the big cloud drives and everything else rclone speaks, mounted inside the container so the server and other containers never see them

• Share links with a password, an expiry date and download or upload limits, and a WebDAV server to mount your files as a drive

• Users, groups and access rules, two-factor sign-in, passkeys, API tokens and single sign-on through OIDC

• An MCP server for the AI assistants you already use: each key gets its owner's rights, reads only until you allow writing, and never deletes anything for good

• A desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux with the same interface, on Linux also as a Flatpak, from the releases page

• 42 languages, light and dark, and your own accent colour

• Images: junkerderprovinz/cannoncommander:latest on Docker Hub and ghcr.io/junkerderprovinz/cannoncommander:latest, for amd64 and arm64

Requirements

• Unraid 6.10+

• On the first start the container writes a password for the user admin into its log (Docker tab, CannonCommander icon, Logs). Sign in with it and pick a new one of at least 12 characters

• Keep the WebUI on your own network. To reach it from outside, put it behind a reverse proxy with https or use a VPN such as WireGuard or Tailscale

• Remote storage needs /dev/fuse and the SYS_ADMIN capability, and the template sets both for you

• Spinning disks down and Unraid notifications are off by default. To switch them on, set CC_UNRAID_SOCKET to true and map the paths the template describes

Bugs, Problems, Wishes

Something not working, a question or an idea? The best place for it is an issue on GitHub: github.com/junkerderprovinz/cannoncommander/issues. Everything stays in one place there, and nothing gets lost in a long thread.

For a bug, whether you post it there or here, these help:

• Unraid version (Settings → System Information)

• Image tag (latest or a pinned version), or for the desktop app your system and the app's version

• Output of docker logs --tail 200 CannonCommander

• What you did, what you expected and what happened instead

• For remote storage, which kind it is (SFTP, SMB, S3 and so on)

Credits

CannonCommander started from the code of FileBrowser Quantum by Graham Steffaniak and contributors, which itself grew out of File Browser. Both are under the Apache License 2.0, and their notices are kept in the repo's NOTICE file. Thank you to everyone who worked on them before us. Remote storage runs on rclone, and the image brings ffmpeg, MuPDF and 7-Zip for video, PDF and archives. If CannonCommander has earned a place on your server, toss a coin to your knight: you can buy me a coffee.

Self-hosted, AGPL-3.0 licensed: you run it, you own your data and the responsibility.

Edited 17 hours ago17 hr by junkerderprovinz