December 2021 (Version 1.22.0, build 20211211.10)

Welcome to Storage Explorer version 1.22.0. This release includes several new features, and some less visible but still notable improvements. For a deeper dive into these features and more, continue reading below. A detailed list of all changes can also be found here.

Tree view search improvements

To help address feedback regarding the performance of searching for resources in the tree view, you can now specify what type of resource you are searching for.

When you specify the type of resource/s to search for, Storage Explorer will avoid wasting time enumerating and inspecting irrelevant resources.

Status information regarding the progress of search has also been added to help make it clear what search is doing, how many resources have been looked at, and to help clarify when the search is complete.

We hope that these changes will help alleviate the performance issues with tree view search. As a reminder, for the best tree view search performance, make sure you filter out any subscriptions that do not contain the resource/s you are looking for. You can also use Search From Here, which can be found in the context menu of most tree nodes, to help further scope your search. Also, remember that for blob containers and queues you can use Open by name..., which can be found in the context menu of the Blob Containers and Queues service nodes, to quickly open a blob container or queue if you know exactly which Storage Account it is in.

System theme

You can now configure Storage Explorer to mirror your system/OS theme. To do so, go to Settings > Application > Theme and choose System default. When enabled, Storage Explorer's theme will automatically match the system/OS theme.

Additional support for System Proxy

In version 1.20, Storage Explorer added the ability to use your system/OS proxy & SSL certificate settings. For that release, however, only a small subset of features supported it. Significant work has now been completed such that almost all Storage Explorer features now support system proxy. We encourage you to try enabling system proxy if you have done either of the following:

• Manually configured proxy settings because you work behind a proxy
• Imported SSL certificates to work around "self-signed certificate" issues

If you run into any issues with system proxy, please let us know by opening an issue on GitHub. You can read more about system proxy and check the list of features which do not support it here.

Clone archived blobs to non-archived tiers

If you have archived blobs that you need at a non-archived tier, you can now avoid going through the rehydration process by directly cloning the blob to a new non-archived blob. To do so, open the context menu of an archived blob and select Clone and Rehydrate.

AzCopy 10.13.0 and new transfer settings

The integrated version of AzCopy has been upgraded to 10.13.0. The release notes for this version of AzCopy can be found here.

Additionally, several new AzCopy transfer settings have been added.

• Disable Auto Decoding: Disables the automatic decoding of encoded illegal Windows characters in file names when uploading.
• Include Directory Stubs: Enables the preservation of directory stubs (blobs with metadata hdi_isfolder=true) during service to service transfers.
• Transfer Block Blobs With Minimal Blocks: Forces AzCopy to transfer block blobs in the minimum number of blocks possible.

All of these settings can be found under Settings > Transfers > AzCopy.

App size reduction

We recently noticed that Storage Explorer has significantly grown in size since version 1.0. Therefore, we made it a priority during this release to reduce the size of Storage Explorer back down to a more reasonable level. As a result of these efforts, the size of Storage Explorer on Windows has been reduced from 490 MB to almost 350 MB, with similar improvements on macOS and Linux. We'll continue monitoring app size going forward, and will look for additional ways to reduce it when possible.

Prompt to start emulator

We often see confusion regarding errors that pop up when trying to access an emulator storage account connection where the emulator has not yet been started. To help alleviate the confusion, Storage Explorer will now prompt you to start your emulator if it doesn't appear to have been started yet.

We're also starting to think about and discuss potentially having Storage Explorer start your emulator for you. If this is a feature you are interested in and you'd like to be a part of that conversation then feel free to participate in this GitHub issue.

Cosmos DB integration retirement

In August 2020 we announced that the Azure Cosmos DB integration with Storage Explorer was being deprecated and that it would be removed no earlier than one year from then. Now that it has been over a year since that announcement, we are completing this process with the retirement of all Azure Cosmos DB features in Storage Explorer. Starting with version 1.22.0, if you attempt to expand any Cosmos DB tree nodes you will be presented with a message detailing this retirement. If you wish to hide the Cosmos DB tree nodes you can do so by going to Settings > Services > Cosmos DB (Retired) and un-checking the checkbox. Cosmos DB users should move to using the Azure Portal, the Azure Portal desktop app, or the standalone Cosmos Explorer instead – all of which contain many new features that aren’t currently supported in Storage Explorer.

Accessibility fixes

During this release we fixed a small number of accessibility related issues. For a full list of issues fixed see here.