Thunar is developed by Benedikt Meurer, and was originally intended to replace XFFM, Xfce's previous file manager.

It was initially called Filer but was changed to Thunar due to a name clash.

Like the rest of Xfce, Thunar is designed to comply with standards, such as those stated at freedesktop.org.

Thunar is simple and lightweight by design, but its functionality can be extended through plugins.

Features were added and UI elements changed iteratively to react to test user input.