Folder-Peek

Folder Peek is a small open source tool for Windows that solves one specific annoyance: sometimes you just want to grab a single file out of a folder sitting on your desktop, but opening the full file explorer window, finding the file, and closing it again feels like more effort than the task deserves.

Instead of replacing the file explorer, Folder Peek adds a temporary expansion layer over your desktop folders. You perform a gesture on a folder icon, and a small panel showing its contents pops up right beside it. Clicking a file opens it with whatever program normally handles that file type, and the panel closes itself automatically unless you have pinned it open. If a subfolder appears inside, you can expand it the same way, creating a chain of panels going deeper.

The default trigger is holding the space bar and dragging with the left mouse button, but four alternative gestures are available too, including middle click dragging, folding the option into the right click menu, or holding down the left or right mouse button briefly. Panels can be pinned open in different states, several can exist side by side, and you can drag a file straight out of a panel into another program such as a chat window or editor. The interface supports light mode, dark mode, or following your system setting, and can start automatically with Windows while staying in the system tray.

The author is upfront that this is a working prototype rather than a finished product. The core flow, from tray icon to gesture detection to opening files, already works, but gesture options are still being refined, only ordinary folders are supported so far, and features like special system shortcuts, renaming, searching, and thumbnail previews are not implemented yet. It targets Windows 10 and 11 running on .NET 8, is built with C# and WPF, and a ready to run release package is available alongside the option to build it yourself from source. The project is released under the MIT license.