People look for an alternative for one of two reasons: Storage Explorer will not sign in or will not start, or it is heavier than the job at hand. The right replacement depends on which of those it is.
az storage blob list). Good for scripts and for checking
one thing. Verbose for browsing.General-purpose cloud file managers (the kind that also speak S3 and FTP) can attach an Azure account. They work, and they are worth it if you juggle several clouds. They are also one more desktop app to keep updated, and most charge for the paid tier.
If you are already in an editor all day, browsing blobs there removes an app switch entirely. This is the narrowest option — it does not move terabytes and does not manage accounts — but for “what is in this container, and what does that file say” it is the shortest path.
Whatever you pick, note how it authenticates. Tools that use an access key or SAS token avoid the interactive sign-in flow that Storage Explorer gets stuck in — at the cost of holding a full-access credential, which needs to live in a password store.
These guides are written by sellerkit. We publish JetBrains IDE plugins, including one for Azure Blob Storage, listed below. Everything above works whether or not you use it.
Our plugin declares no upper IDE build limit, makes no network call until you press Connect, and each release is run through the JetBrains Plugin Verifier against multiple IDE versions before it ships.