FAQ

This file contains a list of frequently asked questions about Thunar and the
appropriate answers to these questions.


1. What is Thunar?
==================

  Thunar is a fast and easy-to-use file manager for the X Window System, with a
  special focus on the Xfce Desktop Environment.


2. 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. 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.


3. Where does Thunar store the metadata associated with files?
==============================================================

  Thunar uses the metadata daemon provided by GVFS.


4. 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.


5. 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  - reload the current folder


6. 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:

   1. If you are running Xfce 4.3 or above then you can enable "Editable
      menu accelerators" in the "User Interface Preferences" dialog.
   2. If you are running GNOME then you can enable "Editable menu
      accelerators" in the "Menu and Toolbars" control center dialog.
   3. Otherwise put the following in your ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file (create the
      file if it doesn't exist):

       gtk-can-change-accels=1


7. 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 (most likely 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.