Most or maybe even all other software I use on Windows has a familar window for opening or saving files whilst GIMP seems to use something custom which lacks the features the standard window has like the pinned quick access shortcuts or the view options which let me preview images of each file simultaneously. It sure would be nice if GIMP would drop its custom effort and use whatever it that I presume Microsoft has provided for programs to use to access files and folders. Does anyone know why GIMP uses this custom-coded window? It makes selecting the right images to open slow and error-prone.
The technical answer is because Gimp uses a general library (GTK) for all its widgets and when you ask the Windows version of the GTK library to open a file selector, it opens its own (which looks a lot like the one it opens on Linux...).
Then the Gimp selector does a few things that the Windows can't do: consider that one use of this selector is to open XCF files and that Windows doesn't know how to show a preview for such files. The Gimp selector can also filter on image filetypes, and show shortcuts to your favorite pictures folders.
And if you are on Windows, you can always open a folder in thumbnail view in the file explorer and drag&drop the files to the Gimp toolbox to open them.
ahh. Ofnuts posted a good explanation while I was making example:
FWIW:
Not going into a long discourse of why Gimp does not try and emulate other applications. Its roots go back to a UNIX program, now a Linux program. Look up GTK on Wikipedia. It is ported to Windows for your use.
There are applications like XnViewMP which give that table-of-icons view and will open selected files with a program such as Gimp.
Windows explorer can be used for drag-n-wish if you want. Drag the selected files to the area top of the toolbox.
example:
https://i.imgur.com/JTzC8j1.mp4
...and if you want to save all the open images there is a script that can help see:
https://www.lauchlin.com/2014/04/21/save...from-gimp/