External Applications

FreeFileSync User Manual:

Quick Start Command Line Comparison Settings Daylight Saving Time Exclude Files Expert Settings External Applications Macros Performance RealTimeSync RTS: Run as Service Schedule Batch Jobs Synchronization Settings (S)FTP Setup Tips and Tricks Variable Drive Letters Versioning Volume Shadow Copy

When you double-click on one of the rows on the main dialog, FreeFileSync opens the operating system's file browser by default:


Windows:	explorer.exe /select, "%local _ path%" & exit 0
macOS:	open -R "%local _ path%"
Linux:	xdg-open "$(dirname "%local _ path%")"

To customize this behavior, or integrate other external applications into FreeFileSync, navigate to Menu → Tools → Options → Customize context menu and add or replace a command.

All entries can be accessed quickly by pressing the associated numeric keys 0–9 or via the context menu that is shown after a right mouse click. The first entry can also be executed by double-clicking on an item.

In addition to regular **Macros** , the following special macros are available:


Macro	Description

%item _ path%	Full file or folder path
%local _ path%	Creates a temporary local copy for files located on SFTP and MTP storage. Otherwise identical to %item _ path% for local files and network shares.
%item _ name%	File or folder name
%parent _ path%	Parent folder path

• To refer to the item on the opposite side, append " 2 " to the macro name:
%item _ path 2 %, %local _ path 2 %, %item _ name 2 %, %parent _ path 2 %.
• To generate a list including all selected items (separated by space), append " s " to the macro name:
%item _ path s %, %local _ path s %, %item _ name s %, %parent _ path s %.

Examples

• Start a file content comparison tool:Windows: WinMerge
"C: \ Program Files (x86) \ WinMerge \ WinMergeU.exe" "%local _ path%" "%local _ path2%"
macOS: opendiff (requires Xcode)
opendiff "%local _ path%" "%local _ path2%"
Ubuntu: kompare (sudo apt install kompare)
kompare "%local _ path%" "%local _ path2%"
• Show file in Windows Explorer:
explorer.exe /select, "%local _ path%" & exit 0
Note
Explorer.exe does not set an exit code, but FreeFileSync will show an error message if it does not find exit code = 0 ("Success"). To mitigate, append ( & ) command exit 0 to set the exit code explicitly.
• Open command prompt for the selected item:
start cmd.exe /k cd /D "%parent _ path%"
Note
FreeFileSync hides the console window, so start opens a new window. cmd.exe /k runs the following command without immediately exiting the console. cd navigates to the directory, even if it's on a different volume ( /D ).
• Copy item path to Clipboard (as alternative to CTRL + C)
echo %item _ path%| clip
• Write list of selected file paths to a text file:
echo %item _ path% >> %csidl _ Desktop% \ file _ list.txt
• Preview files using Quick Look on macOS:
qlmanage -p "%local _ path%"
• Pass a list of selected files to a script as command line arguments:
C: \ my-script.cmd "%local _ path s %"

Note
Macros need to be protected with quotation marks if they resolve to file paths that could contain whitespace characters.

External Applications

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