1 This file contains a list of frequently asked questions about Thunar and the
2 appropriate answers to these questions.
8 Thunar is a fast and easy-to-use file manager for the X Window System, with a
9 special focus on the Xfce Desktop Environment.
12 2. Why doesn't Thunar execute files marked as executable?
13 =========================================================
15 For security reasons Thunar only executes files of type application/x-desktop,
16 application/x-executable and application/x-shellscript. For desktop files
17 the execution feature will only be enabled if the desktop file is of type
18 Application and a valid Exec line is given. For the other types the feature
19 is available if the file is marked executable for the current user.
21 Also note that for application/x-executable and application/x-shellscript, the
22 types of the file don't really need to match these types exactly, but it is
23 suffice if the detected type has a parent that matches one of the two types
24 listed above, or if the MIME-type is an alias for one of the above.
27 3. Where does Thunar store the metadata associated with files?
28 ==============================================================
30 Thunar uses the metadata daemon provided by GVFS.
33 4. Where does Thunar store its preferences?
34 ===========================================
36 Thunar stores the user configurable preferences (and hidden settings) in
37 an .ini file, which is located at
39 $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/Thunar/thunarrc
41 and can be examined using a text editor. See docs/README.thunarrc for an
42 overview of the various preferences.
45 5. How to use mouse gestures in Thunar?
46 =======================================
48 Thunar currently features basic support for so called "mouse gestures" in its
49 icon view. You can use these "mouse gestures" by holding down the middle
50 mouse button (usually the mouse wheel) while the mouse pointer is on the
51 background area of the icon view component (any area that is not covered by
52 an icon or a text). Now you can move the cursor into four directions to
53 perform certain actions, which are described below.
55 * Left - opens the previous visited folder
56 * Up - opens the parent folder
57 * Right - opens the next visited folder
58 * Down - reload the current folder
61 6. How do I assign different keyboard shortcuts?
62 ================================================
64 If you want to rebind a shortcut, Thunar supports the standard GTK+ way
65 of changing shortcuts: simply hover over the menu option with the mouse
66 pointer and press the keyboard shortcut you want to rebind it to.
68 To delete a keyboard assignment, press the Backspace key while you are
71 If the shortcut doesn't change, then you need to enable the feature in
72 GTK+. This can be achieved in 3 ways:
74 1. If you are running Xfce 4.3 or above then you can enable "Editable
75 menu accelerators" in the "User Interface Preferences" dialog.
76 2. If you are running GNOME then you can enable "Editable menu
77 accelerators" in the "Menu and Toolbars" control center dialog.
78 3. Otherwise put the following in your ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file (create the
79 file if it doesn't exist):
81 gtk-can-change-accels=1
84 7. Where does Thunar store the keyboard shortcuts?
85 ==================================================
87 The custom keyboard shortcuts are stored in the standard Gtk accel map
88 format in a file located at
90 $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/Thunar/accels.scm
92 Lines starting with ; are comments. See the GTK+ documentation for details
93 about the file format. If you are a packager or a system administrator and
94 want to provide a system-wide default for the keyboard shortcuts, that is
95 different from the default shortcuts in Thunar, you can create a file
96 Thunar/accels.scm in one of the $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS. For example, if /etc/xdg
97 is part of $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS (most likely for most Linux distributions), you
98 can install system-wide defaults to
100 /etc/xdg/Thunar/accels.scm
102 Thunar will then load shortcuts from this file on first startup.