Tips & Tricks

This page should be used to collect useful tips for (new) Thunar users.

As in every file manager, there are key bindings to select files. Ctrl helps to select single files and Shift to make a selection of several files. In addition there is Ctrl+s to select files by pattern (ie.: *.sh).

Thunar has a few built-in simple mouse gestures. Middle click on a blank space and move:

• Up to get into the parent directory
• Left to get into the previous directory
• Right to get into the next directory
• Down to refresh the current directory

Jump to a path:

• by typing first / (start at root) or ~ (start at user home directory);
• by opening the location box Ctrl+l (shows the current location).

Those shortcuts work in pathbar and in toolbar style. In the first it will open dialog boxes and in the second it will focus the address bar.

See the Custom Actions page for details about this nifty feature.

• Ctrl+B shows/hides the shortcuts pane.
• Ctrl+T shows/hides the tree pane.
• F9 temporarily shows/hides the side pane.

You can open folders in new windows from the main view, the path bar, the shortcuts pane and the tree pane by double middle-clicking on the folder or right-clicking the folder and selecting Open in New Window from the context menu.