Polo – A Modern Light-weight File Manager for Linux

Polo is a modern, light-weight and advanced file manager for Linux, that comes with a number of advanced features that are not present in many commonly used file managers or file browsers on Linux distributions.

It comes with multiple panes with multiple tabs in each pane, support for archive creation, extraction and browsing, support for cloud storage, support for running KVM images, support for modifying PDF documents and image files, support for writing ISO files to UDB drives and much more.

Features

  1. Multiple Panes – Supports three layouts: single-pane, dual-pane and quad-pane with tabs in each pane with an embedded terminal which can be changed with the F4 key.
  2. Multiple Views – Support for multiple views: List view, Icon view, Tiled view, and Media view.
  3. Device Manager – shows a list of connected devices with mount and unmount options with support for locking/unlocking LUKS encrypted devices.
  4. Archive Support – Support for the creation of multiple archives formats with advanced compression settings.
  5. PDF Actions – Split and Merge PDF pages, Add or Remove Password, Rotate, etc.
  6. ISO Actions – Mount, Boot in Virtual Machine, Write to the USB drive.
  7. Image Actions – Rotate, Resize, Reduce Quality, Optimize PNG, Convert to other formats, Boot or Reduce Colors, etc.
  8. Checksum & Hashing – Generate MD5, SHA1, SHA2-256 ad SHA2-512 checksums for file and folders, and verify.
  9. Video Downloads – Allows video downloads in a folder and can be integrated with the youtube-dl downloader.

How to Install Polo File Manager in Linux

On Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distributions such as Linux Mint, Elementary OS, etc, you can install the polo packages from the Launchpad PPA as follows.

$ sudo apt-add-repository -y ppa:teejee2008/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install polo-file-manager

On other Linux distributions such as Debian, RHEL, CentOS, Fedora and Arch Linux, you can download the installer file and execute it in a terminal window as shown.

$ sudo sh ./polo*amd64.run   [On 64-bit]
$ sudo sh ./polo*i386.run    [On 32-bit]

Once you have successfully installed Polo, search for it in the system menu or dash and open it.

Polo - Single-pane layout with Sidebar and IconView
Polo – Single-pane layout with Sidebar and IconView
Polo - Dual-pane layout with IconView
Polo – Dual-pane layout with IconView

To open a terminal panel, click on Terminal.

Polo - Single-pane layout with Terminal View
Polo – Single-pane layout with Terminal View

To connect to a remote Linux server, go to File then click on Connect to Server and enter the appropriate connection parameters and click Connect.

Polo - Connect to Remote Server
Polo – Connect to Remote Server

In addition, you can also add a cloud storage account by going to Cloud then Add Account. Note that cloud storage support requires the rclone package.

Polo - Add Cloud Account
Polo – Add Cloud Account

Polo is a modern, light-weight and feature-packed file manager for Linux. In this article, we showed how to install and briefly use Polo in Linux. Use the feedback form below to share your thoughts or ask questions about this advanced and exciting file manager.

Ravi Saive
I am an experienced GNU/Linux expert and a full-stack software developer with over a decade in the field of Linux and Open Source technologies

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11 thoughts on “Polo – A Modern Light-weight File Manager for Linux”

  1. I have paid this app in 2018, and no updates since. I discovered that there will not, the ‘developer’ will pursue with a new ‘paid’ app… I would not trust teejee anymore, save your money

    Reply

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