Double Commander is a dual-pane file manager. It is a piece of free and open-source software licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. It is designed to be operated by a keyboard, a mouse, or by both at the same time.

It has support for tabs, bookmarks, customizable keyboard shortcuts, compressed files, checksums, and custom file list colors.

The default keyboard shortcuts and default functionality are inspired by the Total Commander for Microsoft Windows only. This makes it similar in operation to the original Norton Commander for DOS, which popularized the basic concept in the 1990s. It is a modern application, designed for use with the latest operating systems.

The basic concept of operation traces its roots to the popular Norton Commander for DOS. While Double Commander can be operated by mouse just like other modern file managers, it also enables easy operation by keyboard only, like its conceptual predecessors did.

The file manager features a highly customizable design with extensive and detailed configuration options. Many of its toolbars can be hidden or shown, configured in detail, colors changed, and keyboard shortcuts assigned.

The usability of a dual-pane file manager depends on it providing an extensive amount of commonly desired functionality and features, and on quality of implementation of those functionalities and features. Double Commander attempts to provide a large number of well-implemented features.

Double Commander has all the basic functionalities of a common dual-pane file manager. Those include the copy, move, rename and delete operations applied on individual files or directories, or the same operations applied on a selection of files and/or directories. Additional features that are not always present in other similar file managers are given in the following list.