I just don't like the design of this, or any other explorer alternative for that matter. It always has some very outdated feel to it... combined with an extremely cluttered view. Like texts and icons and buttons and options that I would never need all over the place.

"Like texts and icons and buttons and options"

Oh the horror... :)

All of those toolbars and lister layouts are extremely customizable.

Can you get rid of all of them?

My preferred UI:

Location bar Sidebar (file tree) | File List

Would be nice if each feature you don't need could be removed from the purchase price. I think the version I want would end up having a negative price tag ;)

That's also another point. I don't want to have to customize a software before it's reasonably usable. I probably don't even know myself how I would like it to be. It's the UX designer's job to make it pretty, not the user's.

IMHO DOpus is an OS in itself ! Way too bloated / complicated for my tastes. Of course YMMV.

After 10+ years of DOpus, I can't imagine ever going back to Explorer, except for the odd outlier use case. I'm sorry to see people saying that it's 'cluttered'. That's exactly the way I like it, and you can make it as basic as you like.

+1 for DOpus, though as much as I pester the devs they refuse to develop for the mac :-P

link to Directory Opus

https://www.gpsoft.com.au/