Total Commander

I am an avid long time user of TC but I have never used plugins as most functions I needed are implemented anyways.

Are you using plugins? And which ones are the most important ones?

Yes.Here is the list that useful for me.

7zip
Imagine
Ampview
nfoview
Font (As both lister and content plugins)
envvar
DirSizeCalc

Here are mine: (ordered by priority)
- QuickSearch eXtended
- VisualDirSize
- DirSizeCalc
- sftpplug
- SkyDriveExplorer
- TextSearch
- InstallExplorer
- ResExtract
- VirtualPanel

Not real Plugins:
- ButtonBar eXtended
- F4Menu

BTW: I voted for "yes" and "no" to show that its senseless to use checkboxes instead of radiobuttons.

I use quite a few of them (see below), and I picked one of each kind as essential:
- Imagine (Lister)
- DirSizeCalc (Content)
- 7zip (Packer)
- PassStore (FileSystem)

[ListerPlugins]
- Imagine.wlx (Daily), has it's own plugins (M$HD, JP2K, 7z, RAR, HV3, ALZ) which I rarely use
- SWFView.wlx (Frequent)
- fileinfo.wlx (Frequent)
- EventLog.wlx (Rare, in conjunction with EventLog.wfx)
- TorrentLister.wlx (Rare)
- linkinfo.wlx (Very Rare)
- office.wlx (Very Rare, I mostly use OpenOffice.org instead)
- MultiLister, former PDF Filter (Very Rare, I mostly use dedicated programs directly)
- Sudoku (only used once or twice)
- xBaseView free (not used ever since the free version did not support *.mdb anymore)
- HTML-View (not used (uninstalled), I now use Firefox instead)
- Excellence (not used (uninstalled), I now use OpenOffice.org instead)
- OOo-View (not used (uninstalled), I now use OpenOffice.org directly)
- Syn (not used (uninstalled), I now use Notepad++ instead)
- SynPlus (not used (uninstalled), I now use Notepad++ instead)
- GSA lister (not used (uninstalled), I now use Notepad++ instead)
- SynMinus (not used (uninstalled), I now use Notepad++ instead)

[ContentPlugins]
- DirSizeCalc.wdx (Daily)
- cputil.wdx (Frequent)
- SecInfo.wdx (Frequent)
- ShellDetails.wdx (Rare)
- TextSearch.wdx (Very Rare, for searching)

[PackerPlugins]
- 7zip.wcx (Daily, sometimes I switch to older versions by Dmitry Efimenko or Adam Strzelecki)
- ResExtract.wcx (Average)
- InstExpl.wcx (Average)
- Imagine.wcx (Rare, in conjunction with Imagine.wlx)
- iso.wcx (Very Rare)
- bzip2dll.wcx (Very Rare)
- CreateHardLink.wcx (Very Rare)
- ICLRead.wcx (Very Rare)
- CopyLinkTarget.wcx (only used once or twice)
- DiskDir Extended (not used (uninstalled), I now use Cathy instead)

[FileSystemPlugins]
- PassStore.wfx (Daily)
- AceHelper.wfx (Frequent)
- Services.wfx (Frequent, ever since our Admins at work have blocked regedit.exe)
- Registry.wfx (Frequent)
- StartupGuard.wfx (Average)
- tcburner.wfx (Average, used to be Daily, I prefer it to all standalone burners I tried)
- TotalConsole.wfx (Rare, used to be Frequent)
- UnInstTC.wfx (Rare)
- envvar.wfx (Rare)
- Transformer Framework (Rare)
- EventLog.wfx (Rare, in conjunction with EventLog.wlx)
- IECache.wfx (Very Rare)
- badcopy.wfx (Very Rare)
- DevMan.wfx (only used once or twice)
- Virtual Disk (only used once or twice)
- VirtualPanel.wfx (only used once or twice)
- Outlook (.pst) (not used (uninstalled) after migrating to Lotus Notes)
- Shared Files (not used (uninstalled), requires Admin)
- Versions (not used (uninstalled), I wrote my own Firefox addon instead)

[Utilities]
- Multiple Commands (Daily)
- TC Plugins Manager (Rare)
- Extended en-US Menus (Very Rare, only once per update)
- TCMenu (not used since TC7.5, used to be Daily)
- TC Restarter (not used (uninstalled), wrote my own Restarter in AHK instead)

You can check http://en.totalcmd.pl or http://www.totalcmd.net/ for TC plugins. Check the most downloaded section for good starting point

wcx: 7zip, multiarc, cpio, ha, iso, msi, pack, rpm, z
wdx: movebutton, [twinkey]
wfx: motop2k, wiacam, [fnul]
wlx: ieview, imagine, [borlandview, cdbfview, dbfview, htmlview, iniview, xbaseview]

[] = disabled

wlx: ListDoc, Excellence, Office, ICLview
wdx: CDocProp, Images, FileDiz, FileX, Group, Media
wcx: DiskDir(Ext), ICLread
wfx: FileRedirector, TempPanel, NokiaFS, TurboReg, Uninst

Perhaps, there was once a single day when I didn't use any of the above plugins. They are an undoubtful advantage of Total Commander over its competitors.

I'm actively using these (but I have installed many more for testing):
wcx: bz2, z, mkiso, sqx, 7z
wlx: sgviewer, fileinfo, pdfview
wdx: tc, id3, filesys (random mumbers)
wfx: back2life, Proc list, Registry, S3Browser, SFTP, Uninstall, WebDAV, WinCE

The 'most important' plugin doesn't exist, it depends too much on personal work area.
Maybe there is one quite common here, that's the 7zip packer plugin.

Used daily :
wcx : 7zip
wdx : AudioInfo - ImageSize
wlx : SynUs

(OT)
Daily used addons :
Choice Editor - History Editor

Thank you all for the detailed posts. The TC cracks all seem to be using plugins en masse - even the Big Boss, ghisler, is using many!

Of course, I have immediately started to install some and had to discover that for a non-geek it's not as straight forward as I was hoping for - also given the fact that Total Commander itself is very well documented and a huge amount of issues, features and details are discussed in the forum.

For plugins I think that installation (and uninstallation!) is not that well documented, e.g. I accidentally clicked "No" when asked "The archive contains the following Total Commander plugin/addon... Do you want to install it?" and then I was not able to figure out on how to install it manually... and it took me a while to figure out the different types of plugins... So I wish there was a one-stop documentation.

Nevertheless I am hooked on plugins now!

Welcome Pocus, by the way, and there are worse things to get hooked on

If you have the plugin zip or rar in the TC environment, and have activated it with double-click or Enter,
you will get the auto installation dialog.
If this goes wrong, you will see that the zip still has been opened, viewing the content.
So one could always create the proper plugins subdir manually, like "wcx/7zip/" and copy these files to it.

Because the auto install is not a real 'setup' procedure, removing the plugin files doesn't need an 'uninstall' as well.

As an addon, you could use the Plugin Manager to organize plugins smoothly.

As a newcomer, I began to use TC about 5 days ago.
I think plugins are necessary for TC, because they make TC
the collective wisdom but a single software by Ghistler.

I have found the following plugins most useful:

wfx: SFTP (by Ghisler), EFS2splugin, Brew, VSOFS, NetworkAlt, IE Cache

wcx: fhrar, 7z, MultiArc, DiskDir Extended, Ico, IETotal, InstallExplorer, iso, MHTUnpack, MSI Plus, SieFF, CabCE, GifWCX, MSC

wlx: Font, FileInfo, nfoviewer, ICLView, CADView, EML, TorrentLister, Office2007, IEWebLister

QuickSearch Extended

but I use many more.

I don't use plug ins but since you guys have interesting rely on them for interesting tasks I'll think about it and maybe use some my own, thanks for your postings, is really a good guide.

Cheers.

Nokia FS (today)
DiskDir Extended & Catalog Maker (but neither supports asian chars)

No other pligins needed for me.