The Gnome Commander is seamlessly integrated into the Gnome desktop environment and can therefore serve as an alternative to the default file manager Nautilus which offers a so-called spatial view, where the content of each directory is displayed in a new window.

Keyboard shortcuts and the behavior of certain mouse buttons are freely configurable.

Since Gnome Commander supports GVfs, allowing access to network interfaces such as FTP, SMB, WebDAV and SSH.

There is a bookmark system for folders and a built-in file viewer for text and image documents.

Furthermore, a support for metadata systems such as Exif, IPTC and ID3-Tags for audio and video files, and other documents (e.g. pdf) is integrated.