Binarynights
Elevating Your File Management Experience
We are thrilled to announce the release of ForkLift 4, the next evolution of your favorite file manager and file transfer app. After years of hard work and dedication, utilizing the latest technology, we’ve completely rewritten ForkLift to bring you a more responsive, visually stunning, and feature-packed experience. Get ready to explore a new world of efficiency, speed, and style with ForkLift 4!
What’s New in ForkLift 4?
Blazing Speed
ForkLift 4 is faster than ever before. We have optimized every aspect of the app to ensure lightning-fast performance. Whether you’re browsing files, transferring data, or managing your storage, you’ll notice a significant improvement in speed. You will experience the biggest change in performance when you’re synchronizing files.
Modern and Elegant Design with Customization Options
We believe that a great user experience begins with a beautiful interface. ForkLift 4 sports a sleek, modern design that not only looks fantastic but also enhances usability. Navigating through your files has never been more visually appealing. But that’s not all—ForkLift 4 also comes with a range of predefined themes, giving you the opportunity to tailor the app’s appearance to your preferences. Plus, creative users can even craft their own custom themes, making ForkLift 4 truly yours in every way.
Enhanced Protocol Compatibility for a Modern File Sharing Landscape
In the dynamic world of file sharing, adaptability is crucial. Recognizing the evolving importance of cloud service providers, we’ve broadened ForkLift 4’s protocol support to make connecting to various devices and networks easier than ever before. Whether you’re working with traditional protocols like FTP and SFTP or embracing the latest trends, ForkLift 4 has you covered.
Our Newly Added Protocols: Dropbox, Google Drive Team Drives, and Microsoft OneDrive
We understand that cloud service providers like Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive have become pivotal in today’s file sharing ecosystem. In response to this changing landscape, we’ve integrated support for these platforms. This ensures that you can seamlessly manage and transfer files not only using the latest cloud services but also with the familiar and popular options you’ve come to rely on.
Bug Fixes and User Wishes Granted
We’ve been listening to your feedback and addressing your concerns. In ForkLift 4, we’ve squashed numerous bugs and implemented user-requested features. Your experience is our priority, and we’re committed to making ForkLift the best file manager for you.
Just a few highly requested features added to ForkLift 4:
- Option to save view options for specific folders
- Synchronization of favorites through iCloud
- Option to color the icons in the sidebar
- Connecting to Amazon S3 buckets with bucket level only permissions and using two factor authentication
- Search within content with Spotlight
- Direct connections to cloud service providers including Google Team Drives
- Option to use automatic name column width
- The tools now have the capabilities of a native shell, enabling remote editing as well
Introducing Our New Business Model
With ForkLift 4, we’re introducing lifetime licenses to a wider user base. The ForkLift lifetime licenses come with a defined period of free updates, allowing you to enjoy the latest features, improvements, and security enhancements.
Here’s how it works: After your specified free update period, you can continue using the last version of ForkLift covered by your license indefinitely—it’s yours to keep and use. If you’re eager to stay at the forefront of innovation and take advantage of the freshest updates, simply purchase a new license.
We believe this new business model strikes the perfect balance between providing value to our loyal users and ensuring the sustainability of ForkLift’s development. At the same time, you have the freedom to choose when and how you want to access the latest and greatest ForkLift has to offer.
How to Get ForkLift 4
Visit our Store to explore ForkLift licensing options, including single-user, family, and small business licenses. Each license type offers a choice of 1 or 2 years of free updates.
To celebrate this release, for a limited time only, we are offering an incredible deal: with each new license, enjoy an additional 100 days of free updates.
Read the ForkLift 4 Quick Start Guide to become familiar with essential information about the app.
We have been on a mission to make ForkLift 4 the number one force in file management. It is clean, fast and robust. – Download ForkLift 4 now!
No big new features, removed good features that will not come back in FL4, no upgrade pricing (unbelievable), not satisfying new license model (subscription medium-light) and no real changelog with all new changes / features in the big major update version in an overview – as standard at most of all software apps (Maybe because there are not so many big news!?!) … Your new version seems only try to make an optical „big thing“ (I personally am not really convinced about the new GUI) … Now, after some years with FL3, I will move and try a new „real“ professional file manager. What a pitty.
Full agreement! This is also how you can drive a company against the wall. Bye, Binary Nights.
To reiterate what others have said, I’m not a fan of this change at all.
It seems like you want to have your cake and eat it too.
While many apps have migrated to a subscription model, most did so because they just had a single version (e.g. CoolApp), sold a bunch of it with lifetime updates, saw their potential new client base dry up, and decided to change their model to try and get more money from those existing clients.
But that isn’t really the case here, is it? ForkLift has had multiple versions over the years, and had a paid upgrade approach. People who paid for V2 had to pay more for V3. But they would only do so if they felt it was warranted based on new features — meaning you had an incentive to be innovative and provide some justification to upgrade. So it was a fair trade off — if you wanted the new shiny, pay more. If you were happy as-is, don’t.
While the first example was, let’s be fair and honest, unsustainable, the second example, your prior model, was completely fair and viable for the long term. That’s how most software companies have survived for decades. Assuming they were good and produced, and continued to produce, good products.
But now, you want to move away from that and make everyone pay more, even if there is no promise or guarantee of anything worth the cost.
If V4 would have been good enough to stand on its own, people would have paid to upgrade. But it seems like it only has some minimal improvements to V3, and maybe you realized it wasn’t actually “worth” upgrading to for most people, so decided to go with this approach instead to maximize profits at our expense.
While your ‘better late than never’ thank you to existing customers is at least something, it’s pretty sad that it was only an after thought after enough pushback. But what concerns me is this: do those extra 100 days even worth anything at all? You’ve gone almost 365 days without a single update to V3. So what does +100 or +200 “free” days mean if that same trend continues. Or, even worse, you just drag out updates over a longer period of time to make it seem like you are doing them more frequently.
And there lies the problem. With your new business model, you’ve also changed the way you are incentivized for development. What I mean by this is that you are now rewarded by taking what could have been just one larger update and spreading it out over 3-6 months so it seems like you’re doing more work. Which means we have to wait longer for bug fixes. And any new features will likely be spaced out every 12+ months so you can try to get people to stay subscribed. Either way, the customer base gets screwed.
So no, I am not a fan. Just like I’m not a fan of any other company that has gone down this rabbit hole. I’m sure your reply, if I get one, will be about how we can unsubscribe and keep the version we had. But how long before you change your mind on that one too?
I guess it is time to start looking for alternatives.
Sad but true.
Where are the FL4-Features? Compared with the FL3 the benefits are very scarce.
I’m a long time user of FL3 but I guess I need to look for alternatives…the 100/200 days extra doesn’t change the worth-question.
It is a pity that ForkLift 4 went the same path as other apps in regard to reduced usability. It looks pretty, new features are welcome but core features used 90% of time became worse. Look at the information density in old vs new version. The contrast of alternating background is also worse. (Screenshot here: https://imgur.com/a/YWDEHJT ) Old version had great balance of prettiness and usefulness. The new version is regression in my opinion. And also the translation is gone now.
What do you mean by information density? We will add all languages that were available in ForkLift 3.
Please look at the image I linked that shows comparison between ForkLift 3 and 4. At the regular window size, there is about 15% less rows of files visible (font 12 in both). The new top bar and tabs look pretty but are less useful. And about the translation… Please also look at the linked screenshot – Polish translation didn’t work for me. I really wanted to purchase the upgrade (as I bought last 2 versions) but I decided that it doesn’t make sense as I prefer to use ForkLift 3 as long as it works correctly. And it is pretty much bug-free at this point. It is sad that you didn’t check the screenshot with evidence that I created.
Sorry, but I didn’t see the link in your previous comment before. It was a design choice to make ForkLift 4 less dense looking. It’s on our feature request list to make it more compact. We will consider that if a lot of users would like to see the old line height in FL4.
The Polish localization will be added later.
If you are satisfied with ForkLift 3, then keep using it. We hope that further developments in ForkLift 4 will convince you to switch later.
I agree with your take that the new UI being a downgrade compared to the previous version. – What’s the use of the giant icons next to the paths? Where’s the option to disable it?
– Where’s the option to have the info about available disk space and number of selected objects at the bottom?
– Why make the tabs giant buttons that (in dark mode) don’t fit the rest of the theme?
Usability also suffered:
– Why does the app crash (!!!) when dragging and dropping tabs to the other side?
– Why does the app reopen without restoring the last viewed tabs after a crash?
All in all this update is very disappointing and grounds for a refund (haven’t even touched on the ridiculous licence model). I switched from Path Finder to Forklift a while ago and I’m seriously beginning to regret the decision.
The status bar from the bottom is now on the top below the path, so that space is twice as high as before, allowing us to put a big icon next to them. We think that the icons look good. The tabs look differently, because we wanted a fresh look, and we thought that they look nice.
We tried to fix the crash that can happen when the tabs get relocated, but it seems that there are still issues with that. We will try to fix that if we can find out what is causing the crash exactly. The app reopens without restoring the last state because ForkLift saves that info when you quit it, but when the app crashes, it can’t save that info because it wasn’t quit normally. This works the same way with ForkLift 3 as well.
To my knowledge, Path Finder is subscription based and in addition, they offer a 1 year license, which is the same as our model. I don’t know how our model is ridiculous compared to that.
During beta testing, we fixed all known crashes. Dragging the tabs was one of them, which as it seems, wasn’t fixed entirely. Another issue that causes crashes right now, is the editing of the light and dark themes in column view. This has never been an issue during beta testing, and we have already fixed it, the fix will go live in the next update. Other than these two issues, there are no issues that would cause frequent crashes.
Hi, sadly I’ll not continue with Forklift, as many I don’t like the subscription model, and especially at this price, I prefer buy a lifetime version knowing, that a new version will popup years after.
I’m sorry to hear that. ForkLift doesn’t have a subscription model. Apps with subscriptions don’t work after the subscription expires but you will be able to use ForkLift 4 as long as you want even when you are not eligible to install new updates. Of course, you are free to decide if you want to buy a license or not.
I was so looking forward to the final version…
After test driving it I find that Forklift is still unable to display multiple color tags on a file (Finder can do it) and so far I haven’t found a way to disable individual files or folders in a folder sync. “Automatically Resize” or any other setting in the Preview pane can not be made a default setting. And these are just three nuisances I found within 10 minutes.
Is Forklift 4 really out of the beta state?
I’m sorry for those issues, but they are missing features and not bugs. Deselecting items in the sync window was available in ForkLift 3, so hopefully, that will be available in ForkLift 4 as well. The file viewer in the Preview Pane is an external file viewer. We will check if the user defined settings can be saved and if they can, then we will allow that.
Since the announcement of Forklift 4 and the annual license system, I hesitated for a long time while looking for another software that could replace Forklift that I have been using for years.
Well, thank you, I just discovered QSpace Pro and purchased my perpetual license.
All the best !
We are sorry that you felt the need to switch, good luck with the new app.
The system is in Simplified Chinese, but the software is in English. How can I change it?
ForkLift 4 doesn’t have Chinese localization yet. but we will add it.
Upgraded to v4. Everything is great apart from the fact that my “Tools” where I had about 6-7 command line hacks saved did not survive the upgrade 🙁 I have to restore those manually.
You have to “restore” those because tools work differently in ForkLift 4. Instead of copy pasting them, you can make them much simpler. For example:
Instead of “/usr/bin/open -a /System/Applications/Preview.app $SOURCE_SELECTION_PATHS”
You can use: “open /System/Applications/Preview.app $SOURCE_SELECTION_PATHS”
The whole tools section is much smarter, the tools now have the capabilities of a native shell, enabling remote editing as well. Try to experience with it a little bit and you will see how much more you can do with tools in ForkLift 4.
I’ve been a long time user of Forklift (10+ yrs) and so when I saw the email for a new version I immediately jumped on it. I was very disappointed to the see the new business model with no consideration (or discount) to long time users, however I went ahead and purchased it anyway. After using it for a few days now, I must say that I’m really disappointed. Barely anything in the way of useful new features, the limited “themes” are incredibly poor when it comes to screen readability and the overall UI (although a little prettier), is worse that v3.
As far as stability goes, it’s crashed about 40+ times so far. If you try to edit the “Light Theme” by clicking the + icon to duplicate it, it either crashes instantly, or the majority of the screen goes transparent and unreadable and then crashes when you try to adjust the colours. The theme editing is also incredibly limiting in regards to what you can actually change. If you opt for the dark theme, you can barely see the cursor due to its colour when trying to change the filename.
You also can’t change the background of the top header where the icons and path bar sit, which means it doesn’t stand out from the main files columns making things more difficult to read, plus the actual path with the number of items/disk space being so close together makes things cluttered. The number of items/disk space was right at the bottom of the window in v3, which made it much easier to read and less cluttered.
Clicking on the individual items in the Path also doesn’t work half the time. If you have a folder selected and then try to selected the folder above it, within the Path Bar, sometimes it selects the folder and other times it does absolutely nothing, making it less that useful for navigating long paths structures.
When I purchased v4 I opted for the 2 yr plan only because I know how slow it is to get updates for Forklift. I honestly can’t remember the last time v3 was updated, it was that long ago! I see now that you’ve also offered an extra 100 days for the license due to the backlash of your new pricing model and no upgrade discounts. When it comes to the time between updates for Forklift, an extra 3 months is still a pretty poor offering.
The iCloud Synchronization of favorites is probably one of the most useless features. The favourites I have on one computer are completely different to the ones I use on another. It would be much more useful if you could synchronise all your settings/themes so that all your machines could be configured in the same way.
Overall, I’d say that v4 is a bit of a downgrade compared to v3. I do love using this app though so I really hope that you can improve the UI, make theme adjustments A LOT more flexible in terms of what we can change, fix all the crashes when trying to tweak the themes, and improve the overall stability.
What happened to the touchbar? No icons in v4, I cannot find a setting for it either. Is it gone for good? If so, I will stay with v3 🙁
I’m sorry but ForkLift 4 doesn’t have support for the touch bar.
Darn, I liked the touchbar! I will reconsider purchasing after the trial.
You want to know why people find the new pricing model repugnant?
This is why:
—
ForkLift 4.0 (September 5, 2022)
New
Everything is new
ForkLift 3.5.8 (September 20, 2022)
—
From your change log. 350 days without a single update, bug fix, new feature, improvement, etc. And you can’t even come up with an actual list of new features in V4 that can justify the cost after a year of supposed development.
Giving us +100 days of “free” updates is meaningless. You owe us for the 350 days that you didn’t give us anything all year long. All existing V3 users should be given a free 1 year upgrade to V4 to make up for that.
There were no updates to ForkLift 3 in the last year because we were working on ForkLift 4. There were 5 years of updates prior to that period. Part of the reason why we are switching to a new business model is that we want to add new things to ForkLift continuously and not just when a new major version comes out. We hope that future updates to ForkLift 4 will prove that.
Joining the choir of unimpressed commenters, it’s depressing. I also reflect on the use of the term “Lifetime licence” under the header “Introducing Our New Business Model” above
A software licence commonly has a defined period of free updates, usually a year. if you don’t renew the licence you may continue using the software but are not eligible to any updates. This is exactly what the so called “new business model seem to be all about” – the only new is the added word “Lifetime”.
This smells like a scam. A lifetime licence is usually pricey but gives free access to all future updates – not so in this case. Maybe this update is a sign times up for ForkLift.
I’m sorry that you feel depressed. Maybe, the term “lifetime license” can be used differently as well, but it is clearly expressed on our site what is meant by that: a lifetime license with a set period of free updates. It is lifetime, because after the defined period expires, you don’t loose access to the app and can keep using it for as long as you want. Nobody is claiming that you get free updates for the rest of your life.
Thanks for answering. We are obviously not on the same page here. There are a lot of apps, plugins etc that offers lifetime plans (subscriptions) with uninterrupted updates with no end date and no further payments. What you offer in your “new business model” is a normal subscription. Period. It seems to me your new business model is confusing even for yourself, why would you otherwise need to declare the meaning of it? To me the word lifetime stuck on to a normal subscription gives the product a shine of added value that’s just not there. And no, the term lifetime license cannot be used differently as you suggest. when the meaning of words are tweaked like this it’s usually called false advertising. Just like Bartek (comment below) and many others I feel cheated.
Thanks to Tatos (comment above) I am now trying out QSpace Pro.
I have been a user of your application since May 2008, so for over 15 years, which is quite a long time. I just checked this specifically.
Order Number: ST82297535
Order Date: 5/29/2008
Order Method: Web Store
Grand Total: $29.95
I bought all versions one by one as updates. When I found out that we no longer knew each other and that as a new user I had to buy the application, I felt cheated. That bonus of 100, 200 or any number of additional days of free updates is worthless without a schedule and guarantee of new features. The absurd thing is that I now have to pay for bug fixes that occur after this period. You treated the people who provided you with funding for this project terribly. However, I bought it and was disappointed again. Did I just buy the Beta version? which does not have a Polish localization and suffers frequent failures. Additionally, the user interface looks worse than before, and the settings have not been imported from the previous version. Do I really need to reconfigure all my shortcuts, views and other settings? What will you do with everything I wrote? Customer trust takes years to gain, but can be lost very quickly.
Don’t like the new business model at all either, to me it’s a subscription not a lifetime subscription. And I agree with others that we haven’t had an any updates in Forklift 3 for a year, it seems like we already paid for version 4 but are asked to pay again.
Thank you all for your feedback. Thanks to you, I just saved at least $19.95. I first purchased a FL3 license a year and a half ago. Very cool app. But after reading the reviews of users who switched to FL4, I concluded that I would not do it myself
Why not simply announce the shift to a subscription-based business model? Presenting it as a ‘lifetime license’ just lead to confusion among users who may later realize it’s actually a subscription model. IMO granting long-time users a free one-year update period could allow them to experience and evaluate the new business model. This might encourage them to consider renewing their subscription the following year, especially if you plan to roll out more frequent updates you didn’t do previously. Alternatively, providing a discounted upgrade option could also be a viable solution
This is not a subscription, because you can keep using ForkLift even after your license “expires”. You can’t open apps after your subscription expires.
We are not giving ForkLift for free to people just to convince them to buy it a year from now. Users who want to test ForkLift 4, can use it in trial mode.
“ForkLift 4 didn’t import my multi-rename and sync favorites. How can I fix that?
Multi-rename and sync favorites can’t be imported from ForkLift 3 because those features work differently in the two versions.”
I’ve got a lot of very complex Rename items.
Are you kidding when you say it’s not importable?
Is that respect for your customers? Saying you haven’t developed any tools to convert the whole Favorites is really unprofessional, a disgrace.
I’ll use FL until it no longer works with macOS, but you’ve definitely lost yet another customer.
We understand your frustration and we are sorry for that. The two engines behind the rename feature are totally different in the two versions. In a perfect world, we would have written that converter but because we are a small company and don’t have unlimited resources, we had to make some sacrifices, including not writing the multi-rename favorites converter/importer.
The filters inside the Sync feature work differently than in ForkLift 3, so in that case, importing the favorites would have been dangerous, because it is very hard or in some cases impossible to recreate the same filters. It is safer if the user adds them again to make sure that the filters do what the user wants them to do.
FL3 read my ‘~/.ssh/config’ file containing ‘IdentityFile ~/.ssh/ids/%h/%r/id_ed25519’ meaning I never had to explicitly configure each SSH connection with its individual private key. This was always a big selling point over other SFTP clients; FileZilla, Transmit etc.
However, this appears not to be the case with FL4. Is there any possibility this functionality will be re-instated?
Long-time FL user here. I purchased the newest version of FL4. I hope that updates and bug fixes will happen on a more regular basis. A few of my concerns with the newest version are:
1) There is no global “View Options” settings. I would like all of my FL window panes to be at 19pt font size, with more line-spacing between items, in list view.
2) Synching Favorites and Workspaces works, but what’s perplexing is that I am unable to reach a Favorite or Workspace if it’s not directly attached to my Mac. Local network storage should automatically mount if it’s not directly connected to the Mac running FL.
Upgrade pricing should have been offered from the start for users of previous versions. I don’t mind paying and keeping the version of software I own (I hate subscription software). I would like to see regular updates to know that my investment in this tool has value.
Thank you for upgrading.
1. There was no global View Option setting in ForkLift 3 either. Changing the settings works the same way as in ForkLift 3. You should change the settings in all tabs or save the setting as the Default one and then restore it from the View menu in all open tabs. newly opened tabs copy the view settings of the active tab.
2. I’m sorry but I don’t understand what you mean by this.
So I get that it’s early and I haven’t had my coffee yet, but I can’t even DRAG AND DROP FILES (all I can do with mouse is highlight) since upgrading to FL4 … this is even after a restart. Is there some arcane preference I need to enable? I paid for the upgrade on faith cuz I like FL3 so much but this shakes me …
OK, let me amend that — I can d&D in list view but not column view. Someone please tell me this is not on purpose
We are not aware of such an issue. Please send us a screen recording about this at support [at] binarynights [dot] com
I have used several version of forklift and it used to be the main think I always bought the new version for. I have to say after trying the demo I was not impressed.
Then the price and new way of charging is just daft. What happened to the old way of things you by version X and you got free upgrades until the next major version. Then the companies had to work for you to buy the upgrade as they added features so made it worthwhile to update. How backward is it that you remove features, remove languages and say its a released product and going to cost you.
I have had several crashes on the version 4 and like others have said the release cycle on forklift has never been quick so I would have no faith that they will fix the bugs before my 1 year of updates runs out.
Thank you for your feedback. We will write a blog post explaining why we have switched to this business plan. I can’t answer to each user individually raising the same questions. Please send us the crash reports if there are crashes. We will soon release an update that will fix some of the crashes. We don’t receive a lot of crash reports, a big portion of the crashes happens when you connect to an sftp server. We have already fixed that issue and the fix will be available in the next update. Keep an eye open for future releases to see what has been added to FL4.
Unfortunately FL4 is not able to open *.eml (saved Emails) via QuickView (SpaceBar when file is selected). Hopefully this will be fixed soon. The QuickLook function is very crucial to me…
ForkLift 4 is able to display .eml files, please try to enable full disc access in the system settings, I think that you can’t preview the emails because you haven’t enabled that setting.
No, this doesn’t work. I granted the full disk access…
I see the email mail in the preview pane…with al the mail server stuff…FL4 did not really parsed the email content out (attachments are displayed as a long series of urecognizable text). Quick look opens a window with a spinning loading wheel.
This whole ForkLift 4 release is just a mess and laughably bad in so many ways. FL4 is a downgrade from FL3 in almost every possible way. More was removed from FL4 than added. The only real change is a new (questionable) UI. When asking for an actual change log or a larger list of changes, they say “There are so many changes that creating such a list is quite overwhelming.” That’s a straight cop out, as they know that there aren’t as many improvements/changes as they act like there are. I’ve compiled a list of issues and downgrades in FL4, as well as the excuses that the devs replied with when these issues were brought up.
Let me start by quoting BinaryNights statement with the release of FL4: ”We’ve been listening to your feedback and addressing your concerns. In ForkLift 4, we’ve squashed numerous bugs and implemented user-requested features. Your experience is our priority, and we’re committed to making ForkLift the best file manager for you.” Now let’s look at some of the changes and issues with FL4, to see if what they said is actually true or not. Any comment that the dev’s replied with will be in parentheses.
REMOVED/MISSING FEATURES
– Removal of spacebar to select/deselect items (“Unfortunately, we have removed keyboard selection, the option to select items with the Space bar.”)
– Removal of commander style keyboard shortcuts (“We have removed the option to switch to the Commander style keyboard shortcuts”)
– Removal of touch bar support
– Recent locations section of the “Go to folder” window is missing (“we’ll try to fix that soon”)
– Missing tons of different language localizations that exist in FL3. (“X language is not available in FL4 yet”)
– New UI is less functional – Line spacing/padding makes it so that, when the window size is the same, there are less visible items in FL4 than FL3.
– Can no longer click the favorites button to close the favorites section once opened, only hitting ESC will close it. (“It is not a bug that you can’t close the Favorites from the toolbar the same way as in ForkLift 3. You can only exit that view with the Esc key right now.”)
– Default Folder X support lacking (“There is some support for it but the toolbar icons are missing. We will try to add the same integration as in ForkLift 3 soon.”)
BUGS
– App crash when dragging and dropping tabs from one pane to the other (“We tried to fix the crash that can happen when the tabs get relocated, but it seems that there are still issues with that.”)
– OneDrive connection’s will show the same file displayed multiple times, essentially showing phantom files.
– Certain cloud connections (like iCloud Drive) are not showing all files. They show fine in Finder and other applications.
– When disconnecting from a server, the directory structure for that server is often, but not always, still visible. (“Known issue that’s on their bug tracker.”)
– Various bugs with applying themes. One is that, when using dark theme on the system, selecting light theme in FL4 and then going back to the default theme in FL4 will continue to use the light theme, instead of defaulting to the OS setting (dark theme).
– Bug with the registration process hanging forever when pasting the registration key in. You must force close the application and open it again, at which point it does show that it’s registered. (“If I understand this correctly, you have managed to register ForkLift 4 with your key, so this issue doesn’t need to be solved any longer.”)
– Performing the “New Folder with Selection” option is slow compared to FL3.
– Various random crashes or freezing in FL4.
Even with all those bugs, the dev states “ForkLift 4 is way more stable than ForkLift 3.” That’s straight up not true, since FL3 doesn’t have those problems. The fact that a bug like “dragging tabs between panes causes a crash” exists, then is released in the first official version of FL4, tells you that FL4 is rushed and in a broken state compared to FL3. That’s a common feature that is used in any multi-pane file manager, yet they release FL4 knowing that it doesn’t work. I’m not sure how they could honestly claim that FL4 is more stable than FL3.
To discuss the new licensing model for a moment, I think the model would be alright if there was actually some good improvements in FL4, but that’s not the case. A new (questionable) UI does not make up for all the missing features that existed in FL3. Not to mention, all the bugs in FL4. In addition, we have seen that FL3 hasn’t gotten an update in a year, so this new model makes even less sense when the devs don’t even actively update the product. They even admitted that they knew of bugs/crashes in FL3 that they didn’t fix (“But yes, there were known crashes in ForkLift 3 that we didn’t fix”). Instead, they focused on releasing FL4 in a broken/worse state (compared to FL3) and pushing this new licensing model on people for a worse product. I’m not sure how anyone can trust them when they admitted to purposely not fixing problems in FL3 and then think paying a subscription for updates is going to make things better.
I’m not sure how they can seriously act like this is an improvement when so much was removed or is broken in FL4. When their primary excuses for missing features and bugs are either “We removed that” or “We will look at fixing that,” then the product clearly isn’t an improvement, especially when they can’t even provide a list of true improvements (because they don’t exist).
The way this whole release has been handled and their attitude/replies show that they’re out of touch with their customer base. Not only is the product worse, but they think we’re all stupid and continue to lie and make excuses for all the problems in FL4. They’ve lost me as a customer.
It looks like you guys are now going to introduce an annual payment and the “update” will cost exactly the same as the full price. IS THAT A JOKE?
My current version will be the last one, there is NO reason to “upgrade”, especially since there are free competing programs.
It’s not a problem to pay for an upgrade if it’s worth it. If not, we can keep using the current version. And I think that’s fair. After all, developers need to get a salary to live 🙂
The problem is that FL4 is quite of a downgrade as Tom above explained very well.
After few days of use, I like it very much, it’s much faster than FL3, and don’t find it very expensive.
I don’t like to fight anymore and get angry that simple basic functionalities don’t want to be implemented. They are simply not willing and able to address wishes (selecting items via spacebar- analog FL3) from numerous users. These are not new feature requests, but identical functionality of FL3. I don’t even want to comment on the overpriced pricing model… less features for a new UI, really?
It’s already clear why they deliberately omit a changelog, because it’s already embarrassing, new major version with fewer features. That’s what you get when you have cheap young developers at the start. How to do it right shows qspace pro. That’s all I’m saying. Absolutely cheap, runs on intel/apple chipset, lean, clean changelog and betas, connections without end and and and… The best: The developer will be very happy to take care of the function “select items with spacebar” 🙂 There are capable developers who can not only handle standard frameworks, but still have brains to find solutions. So, that’s it here… Too bad, I was very happy with FL3 for a long time, but here with FL4 everything is done wrong, what you can only do wrong.
I have been facing an issue with accessing my SFTP accounts ever since I upgraded to version 4. However, it was working perfectly fine on version 3. I am not sure if this issue is connected to my v4 license from Setapp. Can you please assist me in resolving this issue? Thank you.
There’s a small bug since at least FL3:
1. Select a file with hidden extension
2. Start renaming it
-> the extension is now visible
3. Cancel renaming with ESC, click somewhere else or just hit enter without changing the file name
-> the Extension stays visible until restarting the app
If you actually change the file name and hit enter the extension disappears.
I came across a basic missing feature in Forklift 4 that was in 3 and is Finder. I had a big file and wanted to check the exact size in bytes. I found I can’t do that. I get values like 2.4 MB instead of the byte count, even in the Info window.