# Thunar File Manager

&date;
2004 2005 2006 2007 Benedikt Meurer

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. The complete license text is available from the Free Software Foundation.

Benedikt Meurer

    benny@xfce.org

os-cillation System development Software developer
This manual describes version &version; of &application;.

## Introduction to &application;

Thunar is a new modern file manager for the Xfce Desktop Environment. Thunar has been designed from the ground up to be fast and easy-to-use. Its user interface is clean and intuitive, and does not include any confusing or useless options by default. Thunar is fast and responsive with a good start up time and folder load time.

The Thunar file manager thereby provides an integrated access point to your files and applications. You can use the file manager to do the following:

- Create folders and documents.
- Display your files and folders.
- Manage your files and folders.
- Run and manage custom actions.
- Access Removable Media.

## The File Manager Window

By default the file manager window consists of a shortcut pane on the left side, the main area on the right and a pathbar above the main area.

File Manager Window

The Shortcut Pane provides shortcuts to different folders on your system. The first shortcut will lead to your Home Folder, the folder you store all your personal data, and will therefore have the name of the current user. The second shortcut will take you to the trash bin, which stores deleted files that can be recovered later. The third shortcut takes you to the Desktop Folder, which contains the files and folders that are displayed on the desktop. The fourth shortcut will take you to the root of your file system - you may want to explore it a bit, even though it may be confusing to you if you are new to Linux/Unix. Just click on the different folders and see what is inside.

Below the File System shortcut, the removable drives and media will be displayed. In the screenshot above, you can see a Floppy Drive shortcut. Click on these shortcuts to access the data stored on the removable drives and media. See for further details.

The remaining shortcuts are user defined. Add your own shortcuts by simply dragging folders to the Shortcuts Pane. This will allow you to access important folders instantly. To remove a previously added shortcut, right-click on the shortcut and choose Remove Shortcut. To rename a previously added shortcut, right-click on the shortcut and choose Rename Shortcut. Note that these actions affect only the shortcut, not the folder referenced by the shortcuts.

The main area will always display the contents of the current folder. Double click on folders to enter them, and right-click on files or folders to get a context-menu offering some choices of what to do with it. Select multiple files by dragging a rectangle over them with the mouse. Alternatively, select one file, hold down the Shift key, and increase or decrease the selection using the arrow keys.

The pathbar will always show the path you took to get to the folder you are currently at. You can click on any pathbar button to change to the folder it represents. Right-click on a pathbar button to bring up a context-menu with some options.

### Customizing the Appearance

There are many ways to customize the appearance of the file manager windows. In case you do not like the way the icons are displayed, choose View View as Detailed List from the main menu to have the contents of the current folder displayed as a list.

You can have the file manager windows display a location bar instead of the pathbar by choosing View Location Selector Toolbar Style from the main menu.

In case you prefer a treeview in the left pane, choose View Side Pane Tree from the main menu.

#### Visible Columns in the Detailed List View

If you prefer to display the contents of the folder as a list, using the Detailed List View, you can customize the columns displayed in the list view. To customize the visible columns, choose View Configure Columns... from the main menu.

Visible Columns

Visible Columns

  Select the columns you want to be displayed from the list of available columns. Click Move Up or Move Down to change the order of the columns. Click Use Default to revert your changes.

Column Sizing

  Select the option Automatically expand columns as needed if you want the list view columns to expand automatically if the needed to ensure the text is fully visible.

## Working with Files and Folders

### Opening Files

When you open a file, the file manager performs the default action for that file type. For example, opening a text file will display it in the default text editor, while opening an image file will display the image in the default image viewer.

The file manager checks the extension of a file to determine the type of a file. If the file has no known extension, the file manager examines the contents of the file.

#### Executing the Default Action

To execute the default for a file, double-click on the file. For example, the default action for audio files is to play the it with the default music playing application. In this case, you can double-click on the file to open the file in the music player.

You can set Thunar preferences so that you click once on a file to execute the default action. For information, see .

#### Executing Non-Default Actions

To execute actions other than the default action for a file, select the file that you want to perform an action on. Choose the desired action from the Open With choices available in File menu or an Open With submenu.

#### Adding Actions

To add actions associated with a file type, perform the following steps:

1. In the main area, select a file of the type to which you want to add an action.

2. Choose File Open With Other Application... from the main menu.

3. Either choose an application in the Open With dialog or select Use a custom command and browse to the program with which you wish to open this type.

The action you have chosen is now added to the list of actions for that particular file type. If you enabled the Use as default for this kind of file option or there was no prior action associated with the type, the newly added action is the default.

You may also add actions using the Open With button under File Properties....

#### Modifying Actions

To modify the actions associated with a file or file type, perform the following steps:

1. In the main area, select a file of the type for which you want to modify the action.

2. Choose File Properties... from the main menu.

3. Select the new default action using the Open With button or add a new action by choosing Open With Other Application... from the drop down menu.

To remove a previously added action for a file type, bring up the Open With dialog as described above, right-click the action you want to remove and choose Remove Launcher.

### File Properties

The file properties window shows more information about any file or folder in the file manager. With this window, you can also do the following:

- Change the icon for special files, such as application launchers and URL links.

- Add or remove emblems for a file or folder.

- Change the UNIX file permissions for a file or folder.

- Choose which application is used to open a file and other files of the same type.

File Properties

To open the file properties window, perform the following steps:

1. Select the file or folder whose properties you want to examine or change. You cannot select multiple items at once and display the properties that are in common to all items currently.

2. Do one of the following:

   - Choose File Properties... from the main menu.

   - Right-click the selected item and choose Properties... from the context menu.

   - Press Alt Return.

## Using Removable Media

### Accessing Removable Media

Thunar supports removable media if it was built with support for HAL, or if you are using FreeBSD. Note however that on FreeBSD 6.0 or newer, it is suggested to use HAL rather than the native support provided by Thunar.

#### To Mount Media

To mount media is to make the file system of the media available for access. When you mount media, the file system of the media is attached as a subdirectory to your file system.

To access media, insert the media in the appropriate device, or connect the new device to your computer (i.e. connect an USB stick to one of your USB ports). An object that represents the media is added to the side pane of the file manager. If xfdesktop is running and configured to display File/launcher icons this object will also be added to your desktop.

To actually mount the media, click on the object that represents the media. For example, to mount a floppy diskette, click on the Floppy Drive object in the side pane. The file manager will now add the file system of the media to your file system hierarchy and display the contents of the floppy diskette in the main area.

#### To Eject Media

If the drive for the media is a motorized drive (i.e. a CD-ROM drive), right-click on the media object in the side pane or on the desktop and choose Eject Volume. The media is ejected from the drive after a few seconds. If the drive for the media is not motorized (i.e. a floppy drive or an USB stick), right-click on the media object and choose Unmount Volume. After a short period of time, a notification will appear to inform you that it is now safe to remove the media or disconnect the drive from the computer.

Unmount notification

However this notification will only be displayed if support for libnotify is enabled, and you have installed a notification daemon. A notification daemon for Xfce is available from the Xfce Goodies Project. If notification support is not available, wait until the context menu disappears before you remove the media or disconnect the drive.

Be aware that you cannot eject or unmount media that is still in use by one or more applications. Therefore if the file manager refuses to eject media, make sure you close all applications that were accessing the media, and be sure to also check command line applications running in Terminal windows.

Make sure to unmount removable media before ejecting. Do not eject a diskette from the floppy drive before your unmount the diskette. Do not remove an USB stick before you unmount the flash drive. If you do not unmount the media first you might lose data or cause your system to crash.

### Management of Removable Drives and Media

Thunar is also able to automatically manage removable drives and media if the thunar-volman package is installed on your system. Note however that this feature requires HAL support.

Now, if HAL support is available and thunar-volman is installed on your system, you can choose to enable the Volume Management feature of Thunar. Therefore, open the file manager preferences, go to the Advanced page and check the Enable Volume Management button.

The next step is to customize the management of removable drives and media to your needs. Click on the Configure link in the Volume Management section, right below the button. The Removable Drives and Media configuration dialog will be displayed.

Removable Drives and Media

If you have used the gnome-volume-manager previously, you should feel right at home, because it was designed to look and behave similar to gnome-volume-manager. The preferences are divided by device categories to make it easy to locate the option for you specific device.

The Storage page contains the most important options. As the name suggests these options apply only to storage devices like external harddisk drives, USB sticks and CD-ROMs. The Removable Storage options are described in detail below.

Mount removable drives when hot-plugged

  Enable this option to automatically mount file systems on removable drives (i.e. external harddisk drives or USB sticks) when such drives are plugged into the computer.

  This option must be enabled for certain other features to work with removable drives. For example, if you disable this option, certain kinds of portable music players cannot be detected any more and so, even if you enabled the Play music files when connected option on the Multimedia page, the specified command will not be run when you hot-plug your portable music player.

Mount removable media when inserted

  Enable this option to automatically mount file systems on removable media (i.e. CD-ROMs or DVDs) when you insert the media into the drive.

  This option must be enabled for certain other features to work with removable media. For example, if you disable this option, it is impossible to detect whether the removable media has auto-run capabilities, and so the Auto-run programs on new drives and media option has no effect for removable media.

Browse removable media when inserted

  Enable this option to automatically display the content of newly inserted media in the file manager. Note however, that the contents will only be displayed if no other action was possible or you choose to ignore the other possible actions. For example, if you insert a CD-ROM with auto-run capabilities and the Auto-run programs on new drives and media option is enabled, you will be prompted whether you want to allow or ignore the auto-run. If you choose to ignore the auto-run the contents will be displayed in the file manager.

Auto-run programs on new drives and media

  Enable this option to make use of auto-run capabilities of certain removable drives and media. See the Desktop Application Autostart Specification for details about the auto-run mechanism. To enhance security, you will always be prompted to confirm the auto-run.

  If the Windows emulator WINE is installed on your system, the auto-run mechanism will also try to run `autorun.exe` files using WINE.

Auto-open files on new drives and media

  Enable this option to make of auto-open capabilities of certain removable drives and media. See the Desktop Application Autostart Specification for details about the auto-open mechanism. To enhance security, you will always be prompted to confirm the auto-open.

The remaining options allow you to specify a command to run when a certain kind of media is inserted into a drive or a certain kind of external device is connected. The command can use three special variables, that will be substituted when the command is run:

`%d`

  Each appearance of `%d` in the command will be substituted with the device file path of the newly added device. For example, if you have plugged in an USB stick, the device file path will be `/dev/da0s1` or `/dev/sda1`.

  If no device file is associated with the device or the device file could not be found for some reason, the variable `%d` will be substituted with the empty string.

`%h`

  Each appearance of `%h` in the command will be substituted with the HAL UDI of the newly added device.

`%m`

  Each appearance of `%m` in the command will be substituted with the mount point where the newly added device was mounted. If the device cannot be mounted (for example printers or keyboards) or if the automatic mounting was disabled, `%m` will be substituted with the empty string.

#### Troubleshooting the Volume Manager

Useful tips to trouble shoot the volume manager in case it does not work as expected.

1. Make sure Thunar is running as daemon. The volume manager depends on this, as it is not a daemon by itself. By default, Xfce automatically spawns Thunar as daemon on startup. If it got killed for some reason, open the Run program (using the keyboard shortcut Alt F2 or right-click on the desktop and choose Run Program... from the desktop menu), enter `Thunar --daemon` and click Run.

2. Try running thunar-volman from a Terminal window after hot-plugging the drive or inserting the media. First, you need to figure out the HAL UDI of the new device using lshal or hal-device. Once you know the UDI, run `thunar-volman --device-added <udi-of-your-device>` in a Terminal window and watch the output for errors or warnings.

If it still refuses to work, ask on the Xfce Forum or the thunar-dev mailing list for help.

## File Management Preferences

Use the File Manager Preferences dialog to set your Thunar file manager preferences. To open the preferences dialog, choose Edit Preferences... from the menu bar, or click on the File Manager button in the Xfce Settings Manager.

The File Manager Preferences dialog is divided into four pages with different options, each described in a separate section below. Basically you can set preferences in the following categories:

- The default settings for the views.

- The default settings for the side pane.

- The behavior of the file manager windows.

- Advanced features of the file manager.

Thunar also supports a bunch of so-called Hidden Options, which control several advanced features of the file manager, but are not included in the preferences in order to keep the preferences dialog simple. The `README.thunarrc` file that is included with the Thunar distribution describes all available options in detail.

### Views Preferences

You can specify a default view, select sort options and display options. You can also specify whether thumbnails should be displayed for file types that support this.

Views Preferences

View new folder using

  Select the default view for folders. When you open a new window, the is displayed in the view that you select. This can be either the icon view, the compact list view or the detailed list view. You can also select Last Active View here to use the view you used for the last active window.

Sort folders before files

  Select this option to list folders before files when you sort a folder.

Show thumbnails

  Select this option to show thumbnails of image files and other supported files. The file manager stores the thumbnail files for each folder in the hidden `.thumbnails` directory in the user's Home Folder.

  See if you want to extend the basic thumbnail functionality provided by Thunar with support for additional file types.

Text beside icons

  Select this options to place the icon captions for items in the icon view beside the icon rather than under the icon.

### Side Pane Preferences

You can select display options for the shortcuts pane and the tree pane.

Side Pane Preferences

The side pane can either display a list of shortcuts for folders in your file system, which is the default, or a tree view of your file system. This page allows you to select the size of the icons for the shortcuts and the tree pane. You can also specify whether emblems should be displayed.

Icon Size

  The size of the icons displayed in the side, ranging from Very Small (around 16x16 pixels) to Very Large (around 128x128 pixels).

Show Icon Emblems

  Select this option to display emblems for folders in the side pane. You can assign emblems to folders in the Properties dialog. Select a folder in the main area and choose File Properties... from the main menu, or right-click the folder and select Properties... from the context menu.

### Behavior Preferences

You can select the preferred behavior to interact with the file manager.

Behavior Preferences

Single click to active items

  Select this option to perform the default action for an item when you click on the item. When this option is selected, and you point to an item, the title of the item is underlined and the item will be selected automatically after a short delay.

  This delay can be configured below the option. You can also disable the automatic selection of items by moving the selector to the left-most position.

Double click to activate items

  Select this option to perform the default action for an item when you double click on the item, and select the item with a single click.

### Advanced Preferences

You can control advanced features of the file manager.

Advanced Preferences

Folder Permissions

  Choose the action that should be performed when you change the permissions of a folder in the Properties dialog. You can choose to let Thunar ask everytime when you change folder permissions, tell it to default to applying the new permissions to the folder only or to apply them recursively to the folder contents as well.

Volume Management

  If Thunar was installed with support for HAL and the thunar-volman package is also installed, you can enable the integrated volume manager. See for details about this feature.

## Customizing Thunar

This chapter describes how to customize certain parts of the file manager to your own needs.

### The "Send To" Menu

Thunar includes a Send To menu, which provides possible targets where files and folders can be sent to. To access the Send To menu, choose File Send To from the main menu, or right-click on a file or folder and choose Send To.

"Send To" Menu

By default, the Send To menu includes an entry named Desktop (Create Link) for all files and folders, which simply creates a link on the desktop for each selected file. In addition, if the Shortcuts Pane is active, the menu also includes an entry called Side Pane (Create Shortcut) for folders, which allows users to add new shortcuts to the side pane. Following these entries, Thunar lists the removable drives currently plugged into the computer. In the screenshot above, the Floppy Drive represents a possible target where files can be sent to. Note that the device is mounted automatically once selected from the Send To menu, so you do not need to manually mount it.

In addition Thunar also ships the thunar-sendto-email plugin, which adds the entry Mail Recipient to the menu, that opens the mail composer with the selected files attach to the new email. If the selection contains atleast one folder, the selected items are added to a ZIP archive before attaching them to the email. Otherwise, if the selection contains multiple files, or a single file, which is larger than 200Kib, the user will be prompted whether to pack the files into a ZIP archive, and send the ZIP archive.

Like most other features of Thunar, the Send to menu can be easily extended by users and application developers with new targets, using standard desktop entry files. These files must be installed into one of the `$XDG_DATA_DIRS/Thunar/sendto/` folders (see the XDG Base Directory Specification for details about the `$XDG_DATA_DIRS` variable).

The `MimeType` of the target `.desktop` specifies the types of files for which this action should be available in the Send To menu. For example, say you want to add entry for a Flickr uploader tool, then this entry should only show up if the selection contains JPEG files (other file formats are not supported by Flickr) and so you should add a line `MimeType=image/jpeg;`. If you do not specify any `MimeType` your entry will show up for all file types.

A complete example using the postr application is shown below:

    # postr.desktop - Integrate postr into
    #                 the "Send To" menu.
    [Desktop Entry]
    Type=Application
    Version=1.0
    Encoding=UTF-8
    TryExec=postr
    Exec=postr %F
    Icon=postr
    Name=Flickr
    MimeType=image/jpeg;

If you install this file to `~/.local/share/Thunar/sendto/` (create the folder if it does not exist yet), the Send To menu for JPEG files will show the new entry Flickr, which can be used to upload JPEG images to Flickr.

The Thunar Project Wiki contains additional examples of useful targets for the Send To menu. Feel free to extend the Wiki page with new examples.

### Thumbnailers

Thunar uses small utilities to create thumbnails of certain file types and displays the thumbnails as preview of the file content. These small tools are called thumbnailers. Thunar ships with thumbnailers for image and font files, and makes use of the installed thumbnailers from GNOME automatically if it was installed with support for `gconf`. Users may however dynamically extend this basic functionality with thumbnailers for additional file types.

If you plan to write a custom thumbnailers, you need to start with a program that accepts atleast two command line parameters, the input file, which is of the file type you plan to support and the output file, which is a PNG file that complies with the format specified by the Thumbnail Management Standard. Additionally your program may also accept the desired size of the thumbnail, which is optional but highly recommended. If you write the output file at an arbitrary image size, Thunar will afterwards scale it to the desired size, which might produce a less optimal result than generating the thumbnail with the requested dimensions.

Once your utility to generate the thumbnails is done, you will need to register your thumbnailer, so Thunar is able to locate and use it. Therefore all you need to do is to install a description file for the thumbnailer (a `.desktop` file) in one of the `$XDG_DATA_DIRS/thumbnailers/` paths. For example, if you want to register the thumbnailer for your user account only, you can install the file into the folder `~/.local/share/thumbnailers/`. The `.desktop` for thumbnailers has the following format.

#### Thumbnailer Description File Format

Thumbnailer description files utilize the Desktop Entry Format with a special `Type` of `X-Thumbnailer` and special field `X-Thumbnailer-Exec` with new field codes. Basically, a thumbnailer description file has the following format.

    [Desktop Entry]
    Version=1.0
    Encoding=UTF-8
    Type=X-Thumbnailer
    Name=Your Thumbnailer
    MimeType=your-supported/mime-type;
    X-Thumbnailer-Exec=your-thumbnailer %i %o %s

The `Version` and `Encoding` are mandated by the Desktop Entry Specification, just use the values shown in the example above. The `Type` field must have the special value `X-Thumbnailer`, otherwise your thumbnailer will not be recognized. The `Name` value describes your thumbnailer.

The `X-Thumbnailer-Exec` field contains the command to run your thumbnailer, and supports certain field codes that will be substituted when the thumbnailer is run. Recognized field codes are as follows:

`%i`
  The local path to the input file for which to create a thumbnail. May be either a path relative to the directory from which the thumbnailer was invoked or an absolute path.
`%o`
  The local path to the output file where to store the generated thumbnail. The output file must be written as valid PNG file according to the thumbnail standard (see above). Note that the path may not end with `.png`, which matters if you invoke certain third party tools.
`%s`
  The desired size of the generated thumbnail in pixels. This parameter is optional.
`%u`
  Similar to `%i`, but substituted with the URI of the file, rather than the path. This was added for compatibility with GNOME.
`%%`
  Will be substituted with a single `%`.

You need to include atleast `%o` and `%i` or `%u`, otherwise your thumbnailer will be useless.

The `MimeType` lists the MIME types - separated by semicolon - for which your thumbnailer is able to create previews.

#### Example EPS Thumbnailer

This example demonstrates how to write and install a new thumbnailer for `.eps` files, which uses the `convert` utility that ships as part of ImageMagick. First, we start with a simple script that invokes `convert` to generate a thumbnail at the requested size.

    #!/bin/sh
    #
    # eps-thumbnailer - Example thumbnailer script for EPS files.
    #
    # Usage: esp-thumbnailer eps-file png-file size
    #

    # command line parameters
    ifile=$1
    ofile=$2
    size=$3

    # invoke convert (ImageMagick)
    exec convert "eps:$ifile" -scale "$sizex$size" "png:$ofile"

Save this script above to a file `eps-thumbnailer`, make sure the file is executable and install it to `/usr/local/bin`.

    $ chmod +x eps-thumbnailer
    $ sudo install eps-thumbnailer /usr/local/bin/eps-thumbnailer

Next we need to create the thumbnail description file `eps-thumbnailer.desktop`, which looks like this:

    [Desktop Entry]
    Version=1.0
    Encoding=UTF-8
    Type=X-Thumbnailer
    Name=EPS Thumbnailer
    TryExec=convert
    MimeType=image/x-eps;
    X-Thumbnailer-Exec=/usr/local/bin/eps-thumbnailer %i %o %s

This file must be installed to `/usr/local/share/thumbnailers` (create the folder if it does not exists).

    $ sudo install -d /usr/local/share/thumbnailers
    $ sudo install eps-thumbnailer.desktop /usr/local/share/thumbnailers/eps-thumbnailer.desktop

The `eps-thumbnailer.desktop` file uses the special key `TryExec`, which, if specified, names a command that must be present on the system for the thumbnailer to be useful. In this case, our script is useless if the `convert` utility is not present.

The last step is to regenerate the thumbnailer cache, so Thunar will pick up our thumbnailer. The thumbnailer cache is located at `$XDG_CACHE_HOME/Thunar/thumbnailers.cache` (unless overridden by your or your system administrator, the `$XDG_CACHE_HOME` points to the folder `~/.cache/`). The thumbnailers cache is regenerated periodically by Thunar, but you can force to regenerate it by invoking the `thunar-vfs-update-thumbnailers-cache-1` utility, that ships as part of Thunar. This utility is usually installed in the `libexec` subfolder of your installation prefix (`sbin` on Debian/Ubuntu). So for example, if Thunar is installed in `/usr`, invoke the utility as follows:

    $ /usr/libexec/thunar-vfs-update-thumbnailers-cache-1

But make sure you run the program from your user account, not the superuser account, since the thumbnailers cache is stored in your home folder, rather than a system wide location.

Now, if Thunar is compiled with support for file alteration monitoring (using the FAM or Gamin services), it will automatically pick up the new thumbnailers cache within a few seconds and afterwards be able to generate thumbnails using your custom thumbnailers. Otherwise you might need to completely restart Thunar to apply the changes, using

    $ Thunar -q

to terminate any running instance, and afterwards restart it from your launcher.

#### Cleaning up Thumbnails

The generated thumbnails are stored in the folder `~/.thumbnails/` complying with the Thumbnail Management Standard. While testing a new thumbnailer, it might help to clean up the thumbnail cache using

    $ rm -rf ~/.thumbnails/

which will also give you some free space in your home folder. Since all the information stored within this folder was automatically generated from files in your file system, you will not loose any sensitive data.

## Advanced Topics

### To Bulk Rename Files

To bulk rename files means to rename multiple files at once using some criterion, that applies to atleast one of the files. Thunar includes a bulk renamer, which can be run separately using the command `Thunar -B` or from within Thunar by selecting two or more files in the main area and pressing F2 or choosing Edit Rename... from the main menu.

Bulk Rename Files

The Bulk Renamers can be applied to the name of the files, the suffix of the files or both to the name and the suffix of the files. Thunar currently supports the following Bulk Renamers:

- Remove characters.

- Numbering files.

- Insert Date or Time.

- Insert or overwrite characters.

- Search and replace characters.

- Convert to uppercase, lowercase or camlcase.

Additional Bulk Renamers may be installed as plugins for Thunar. Check the Thunar Plugins website for currently available extensions. The Thunar Project Wiki contains further details about this feature. Feel free to add more information to the Wiki.

### The UNIX File System

While the Thunar file manager does a good job at abstracting the details of the underlying file system, so the user does not need to care about them, it is sometimes useful to understand the basic concepts to get the whole picture. This section tries to give a brief introduction to the concepts of the UNIX file system, which is used today by all incarnations of UNIX, including Linux.

#### Folders and Paths

In a UNIX file system all folders are arranged in a simple inverted tree structure descending and branching down from a single top level folder, which is called the root directory (the term directory is often used instead of folder) and displayed as File System in Thunar. This means that you can get from any folder to any other by going up the tree until you reach a common point, then down the tree through the appropriate subfolders until you reach your target.

The position of any file or folder in the tree can be described by its path. The path is the list of folders you would have to descend through to get to the target folder or file, starting from the top level folder. For example `/home/luke` is the subfolder `luke` of the subfolder `home` of the top level folder, and `/home/luke/myfile.txt` is the file `myfile.txt` in that subfolder. The leading `/` in these paths represents the top level folder.

Every user has their own folder to hold their personal files and settings. This folder is called the home directory and is displayed in Thunar as special icon with the users login name. The folder is similar to the My Files folder known from Windows. The home directories of the various users in a system are usually located below the `/home` folder. For example `/home/luke` would be the home directory of the user with the login name `luke`, while `/home/jane` would be the home directory for the user with the login name `jane`.

#### File Types

You may have already heard that everything is a file in UNIX. This is true for most objects present in UNIX systems today. In fact even devices are represented as a special files. While this may not make sense at first sight, it is one of the strengths of UNIX and its derivates, and has helped it to maintain a simple core over the years where other operating systems had to introduce new concepts for every new technology.

These are the four most important types of files in the UNIX file system.

##### Ordinary Files

An ordinary file may contain text, a program or other data. This includes image files, audio files, office documents and video files. The term file is often used to refer to an ordinary file.

##### Folder Files

Folders are also files in the UNIX file system. To be exact a folder is a special file, which contains a mapping of file names to file references for every file contained within this folder.

##### Symbolic Link Files

A Symbolic link (often called a symlink) is a special file that contains a path to another file in the file system. Symbolic link files therefore do not contain any useful information themselves, but just refer to other files.

##### Device Files

As mentioned earlier (most) devices are also accessed through the file system. These special device files are usually located in the `/dev` folder. For example the special file `/dev/hda` represents the first IDE disk on Linux.

## Frequently Asked Questions

The intent of this section is to collect the quite numerous frequently asked questions that relate to working with Thunar. If you know of a question that is missing from this page, please file a request.

### Why doesn't Thunar execute files marked as executable?

For security reasons Thunar only executes files of type `application/x-desktop`, `application/x-executable` and `application/x-shellscript`. For desktop files the execution feature will only be enabled if the desktop file is of type `Application` and a valid `Exec` line is given or of type `Link` and a valid `URL` is given. For the other types the feature is available if the file is marked executable for the current user.

Also note that for `application/x-executable` and `application/x-shellscript`, the types of the file don't really need to match these types exactly, but it is suffice if the detected type has a parent that matches one of the two types listed above, or if the MIME-type is an alias for one of the above.

### Where does Thunar store the metadata associated with files?

Thunar associates various settings with files/folders, which we call metadata. This metadata for all files is stored in tdb database file, which is called the metafile. The database file is stored in `$XDG_CACHE_HOME/Thunar/metafile.tdb` and can be examined using the `tdbtool`, which is part of the Thunar distribution (located in the `tdb/` subdirectory).

### Where does Thunar store its preferences?

Thunar stores the user configurable preferences (and hidden settings) in an `.ini` file, which is located at `$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/Thunar/thunarrc` and can be examined using a text editor. See `docs/README.thunarrc` for an overview of the various preferences.

### How to use mouse gestures in Thunar?

Thunar currently features basic support for so called mouse gestures in its icon view. You can use these mouse gestures by holding down the middle mouse button (usually the mouse wheel) while the mouse pointer is on the background area of the icon view component (any area that is not covered by an icon or a text). Now you can move the cursor into four directions to perform certain actions, which are described below.

- Left - opens the previous visited folder
- Up - opens the parent folder
- Right - opens the next visited folder
- Down - reloads the current folder

### How do I assign different keyboard shortcuts?

If you want to rebind a shortcut, Thunar supports the standard GTK+ way of changing shortcuts: simply hover over the menu option with the mouse pointer and press the keyboard shortcut you want to rebind it to.

To delete a keyboard assignment, press the Backspace key while you are on the menu entry.

If the shortcut doesn't change, then you need to enable the feature in GTK+. This can be achieved in 3 ways:

- If you are running Xfce 4.3 or above then you can enable Editable menu accelerators in the User Interface Preferences dialog.

- If you are running GNOME then you can enable Editable menu accelerators in the Menu and Toolbars control center dialog.

- Otherwise put the following in your `~/.gtkrc-2.0` file (create the file if it doesn't exist):

      gtk-can-change-accels=1

### Where does Thunar store the keyboard shortcuts?

The custom keyboard shortcuts are stored in the standard GTK+ accel map format in a file located at `$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/Thunar/accels.scm`. Lines starting with `;` are comments. See the GTK+ documentation for details about the file format.

If you are a packager or a system administrator and want to provide a system wide default for the keyboard shortcuts, that is different from the default shortcuts in Thunar, you can create a file `Thunar/accels.scm` in one of the `$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS`. For example, if `/etc/xdg` is part of `$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS` (the default for most Linux distributions), you can install system wide defaults to `/etc/xdg/Thunar/accels.scm`. Thunar will then load shortcuts from this file on first startup.

## Support

To report a bug or to make a suggestion regarding this application or this manual, use the bug tracking system at http://bugzilla.xfce.org/. Remember that useful bug reports are ones that get bugs fixed, so a useful bug report has two qualities:

- Reproducible. If the developer cannot see the bug himself to prove that it exists, he will most probably not be able to fix it at all. Every detail you can provide helps.

- Specific. The quicker the developer can isolate the problem to a specific area, the more likely he will expediently fix it.

In case you want to request a new feature, please make clear why you consider it a worth addition for the application. It is more likely that a new feature gets added if you provide good arguments for the feature. It will increase the chance of addition even more if you provide a patch that implements the requested feature, but make sure that you read the file HACKING - especially the section labeled Coding Style - before you start hacking up the source.

Else, if you have questions about the use or installation of this software, please ask on the thunar-dev mailing list or point your IRC client to irc.freenode.net, join the channel #thunar and ask for help.

## About &application;

&application; was written by Benedikt Meurer (benny@xfce.org). Visit the Thunar website for more information.

This documentation was written by Benedikt Meurer (benny@xfce.org). The latest version of this document is always available from the Thunar website.

This software is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.