| Plugin | Function | Cool factor | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | | Thumbnail view for images | Press F3 on a JPG or PNG to view it inside the console (using ASCII art or native window). | | Inside | View contents of DOCX, PDF, XLSX | Extracts and displays text from binary office documents. Great for grepping through documentation. | | Torrent | Basic BitTorrent client | Add torrent files and monitor download progress from within Far. Not a full client, but handy for quick downloads. |
Far Manager was first released in 1996 by Eugene Arshinov, a Russian software developer. Initially, the program was designed as a simple file manager with a command-line interface, similar to the Norton Commander. However, as the program gained popularity, users began to request additional features and functionality. To address these requests, Arshinov introduced the plugin architecture in Far Manager 1.70 (2000), which allowed developers to create custom extensions for the application. far manager plugins