Advanced Settings

Thunar allows to customize several aspects of the user interface and the behavior. Some of these customizations can be performed via the File Manager Preferences, while others are available as so-called Hidden Options, which involve manual editing of config/style files.

Several user interface elements in Thunar are customizable via the standard GTK style mechanism. Besides the customization provided by the GTK widgets, that are used in Thunar, there are a bunch of additional settings that can be customized via the GTK theme or the ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file in the users home directory. See the GTK Resource Files documentation for details about the file format.

The following list includes the customizable widgets and the settings that can be customized for this widgets.

The ThunarAbstractIconView widget class is the base class for both the ThunarIconView (the “Icon View”) and the ThunarCompactView (the “Compact List View”). It provides two additional settings that can be customized:

• column-spacing (0...)
  The additional space inserted between columns in the icon and compact view. Defaults to 6 for both the icon and the compact view.

• row-spacing (0...)
  The additional space inserted between rows in the icon and compact view. Defaults to 6 for the icon view and 0 for the compact view.

For example, say you want to reduce the additional spacing for the icon view to 3 pixel, then you can put the following lines in the file ~/.gtkrc-2.0 in your home directory (just create the file if it is not already present):

style "thunar-icon-view-reduced-style"
{
  ThunarIconView::column-spacing = 3
  ThunarIconView::row-spacing = 3
}

class "ThunarIconView" style "thunar-icon-view-reduced-style"

If you would like to change the font of your file lists, match both widgets with *Thunar*View*.

style "fonttweak"
{
font_name = "Gagarin Semi-Condensed 8"
}

widget_class "*Thunar*View*" style "fonttweak"
#widget_class "*GtkTreeView*" style "fonttweak"

All other XFCE apps (read GTK) uses GtkTreeWidget for file lists, for example file choosers that pop up on open and save file.

The ThunarPathEntry widget class is used for the location bar, both in the traditional location selector and the Open Location dialog. The path entry displays an icon right before the path, whose size can be customized via the

• icon-size (16/22/24/33/36/48/64/72/96/128/192)

style property. For example to increase the size to 24 pixel, you can put the following lines in the file ~/.gtkrc-2.0:

style "thunar-path-entry-increased-style"
{
  ThunarPathEntry::icon-size = 24
}

class "ThunarPathEntry" style "thunar-path-entry-increased-style"

You should however make sure that your icon theme supports the icon size, otherwise you might end up with ugly up/down-scaled icons.

The ThunarLocationButtons widget class is used for the path bar style location selector. It provides the following customizable style properties:

• spacing (0...)
  The amount of space inserted between the path buttons. Defaults to 3 pixels.