Dolphin/File Management - KDE UserBase Wiki 12/16/2013 KDE UserBase Wiki Search Page Discussion View View source History Dolphin/File Management Dolphin Other languages: Bulgarian • ​Catalan • ​Danish • ​German • ​Greek • ​English • ​Spanish • ​Persian • ​French • ​Galician • ​Italian • ​Romanian • ​Russian • ​Ukrainian • ​Chinese (China) • ​Chinese (Taiwan) Contents [hide] 1 Discover Dolphin 2 General information 2.1 Dolphin or Konqueror? 2.2 Introduction to Dolphin 3 Location Bar 4 Split View 5 View mode 5.1 Icons 5.2 Details 5.3 Columns 5.4 Setting defaults for all folders 6 Panels 6.1 Non Modal Dialogs 6.2 Places 6.3 Information 6.4 Folders 6.5 Terminal 7 External links 8 File System Navigation 9 Bookmarks and Places 9.1 Three kinds of bookmark 9.2 Enable bookmarks 9.3 "Places" for system-wide navigation 9.4 Bookmarks in applications 9.5 Constraining to one application 9.6 Archive Management in Dolphin 10 More Cool Actions 10.1 Change a File Association on-the-fly 10.2 The Actions sub-menu 10.3 Encode and copy audio CD tracks 10.4 Have your recent files as home Discover Dolphin The first section takes you on a guided tour of Dolphin. The second section deals with the concepts of different types of bookmarks. The third section discusses archive management. Finally we look at 'More Cool Things'. The images are clickable - you can see the enlarged view. Information Where paths are mentioned, remember that they may refer to ~/.kde or ~/.kde4, according to your distro General information Dolphin or Konqueror? This tutorial describes Dolphin for KDE SC 4. Konqueror was the standard file manager in KDE 2 and 3. You can also use Konqueror as the default file manager in KDE SC 4. To do this, from KDE SC 4.2 onwards, open System Settings and go to the Default http://userbase.kde.org/Dolphin/File_Management#Setting_defaults_for_all_folders 1 / 11 Dolphin/File Management - KDE UserBase Wiki 12/16/2013 Applications module. You can select Konqueror or a range of other applications to use as the default file manager. Introduction to Dolphin Dolphin is the file manager of the KDE Software Compilation. I'll show how to use Dolphin for common file managing tasks, and how to customize it to your needs. When we open the Dolphin from the Kickoff menu it shows your starting directory - by default it is your Home directory. To open a file, or go to a folder just click on it. (This can be changed to double-click in System Settings -> Computer Administration -> Keyboard & Mouse , if you prefer it. Some distributions set double-click as the default.) In KDE 4.5 this becomes System Settings -> Hardware Section -> Input Devices -> Mouse section To select and deselect files and folders hover mouse cursor above icon and click the emerging plus sign to select and minus sign to deselect. Like this: When you click the plus-sign, this file or folder will be added to your selection. You can select multiple files in the same way. Selection can be done also by dragging a rectangle (sometimes called the "rubber band" method), and selection and deselection with Ctrl + click for one at a time and Shift + click for a consecutive range. Many selected files looks like this: Creating a new folder: You can create a new folder in the active directory using context (right-click) menu -> Create new or the F10 shortcut. Tabs: Dolphin supports tabbed browsing. A new tab can be opened for example from File -> New Tab (if you have enabled menu bar), by Ctrl + T or by middle mouse click on folder icon and navigation buttons. Note Starting from KDE 4.7, Dolphin's menu bar is hidden, but easy to reach and restore. If you prefer menu bar to be present, you can enable it by selecting Control -> Show Menubar or pressing Ctrl + M . http://userbase.kde.org/Dolphin/File_Management#Setting_defaults_for_all_folders 2 / 11 Dolphin/File Management - KDE UserBase Wiki 12/16/2013 Dolphin opens by default when we click on any folder. It can also be started from Kickoff menu. Location Bar Dolphin integrates a new concept to use the location bar in a faster and more precise way: therefore a breadcrumb location bar is used. Instead of displaying the complete path only the navigation points starting from one of the places are displayed as buttons. By clicking one of these buttons you navigate directly to this folder. In this way you can reach a parent folder from a sub folder in a very quick way. Between the buttons which represent a folder there is a small arrow which is a button as well. By clicking this arrow you can see a list of all the subdirectories on the same level as your current one, giving you a quick directory change. Change directories quickly There is also a classical location bar which displays the complete path. To use this style you can right click on the Location Bar and select Show Full Path . If you want the Location bar to become editable, trigger the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + L or select Control -> Location Bar -> Editable Location . By clicking on the free space next to the last displayed folder in the breadcrumb style you can switch to an editable Location Bar as well. If the editable style is selected a checkmark is displayed at the end of the location bar. This checkmark is a button which can be used to change back to the breadcrumb style. Of course menu and keyboard shortcut can be used, too. Split View Dolphin offers the possibility to split the current folder view so that two folder views are displayed next to each other as known from Midnight Commander. This is a very comfortable view to copy or move files from one folder to another. You can split the view by clicking on Split in the tool bar or, if you have enabled menu bar, View -> Split (keyboard shortcut F3 ). To change back to only one folder view you can click on Close or just press F3 again. The symbol will show you which view will be closed. Depending on the currently active view the minus sign will be shown in the left or right part of the symbol. The active view will be closed. This is important to know if you want to use the keyboard shortcut. There is also a button for splitting and closing the view situated in the toolbar. This button displays the minus symbol as well, so it is easy to know which view would be closed. Of course each view has its own location bar and each view can use a different view mode. View mode Dolphin supports three different view modes: "Icons", "Details" and "Compact". These can be changed from Control -> View Mode , via the menu View -> View Mode (if menu bar is enabled) or via the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+1 (Icons), Ctrl+2 (Compact) and Ctrl+3 (Details). There is also a button for each view mode in the toolbar and the context menu of the folder view offers a submenu View mode to change the view mode. Icons http://userbase.kde.org/Dolphin/File_Management#Setting_defaults_for_all_folders 3 / 11 Dolphin/File Management - KDE UserBase Wiki 12/16/2013 Each file and each folder is represented by an icon in the view mode "Icons". Instead of displaying an icon a preview of the file can be shown. This behaviour can be turned on/off via the menu View -> Preview (if menu bar is enabled) or via the main toolbar button Preview . There is a size limit for the file previews. This size limitation can be configured via Settings -> Configure Dolphin -> View Modes -> General option File Previews -> Maximum file size . There is also an option to use thumbnails embedded in files. In KDE 4.5 Previews are enabled (and maximum size defined) by Settings -> Configure Dolphin -> General page -> Preview tab . Starting from KDE 4.8, the aforementioned settings can be configured via Control -> Configure Dolphin -> View Modes . The files in the currently selected folder are sorted in alphabetical order by default. The way of sorting can be changed via menu Control -> Sort by . The following sort criteria are available: Name Size Date Permissions Owner Group Type Link Destination Path Additionally the sorting sequence can be defined by Control -> Sort by -> Descending or Control -> Sort by -> Folders First . There is the possibility to display additional information below the icons. These can be turned on/off via Control -> Additional Information or View -> Additional Information (if menu bar is enabled). In principal the same criteria which are available as search criteria can be selected. You can group the icons to achieve a better overview. This is turned on via Control -> Show in Groups or View -> Show in Groups (if menu bar is enabled). Now the icons are grouped and the groups are divided by a horizontal line containing the name of the group as caption. The grouping is related to the selected search criteria. Details In view mode "Details" additional information is displayed by default in contrast to view mode "Icons". All files are listed in a tabular. The context menu of the table header offers the possibility to add additional columns. The following columns are available: Size Date Permissions Owner Group Type Link Destination Path Column "Name" is always displayed. By clicking on the header of one of the columns the table will be sorted by this column. By clicking on the same column header the sorting sequence is reversed. Since KDE 4.1 it is possible to display the folders as a tree. In this mode a plus sign is shown next to the folder.