Thunar Hidden Settings
Table of Contents
Thunar is XFCE's file manager.
Recently I have tried it again, after having used pcmanfm for many years. After setting everything up the way I like it I noticed that the shortcuts in the sidepane cannot be rearranged (I am used to having devices first, then bookmarks).
After much searching, I found out that it used to be the way I prefer it, but somebody made an effort to change it, and there are currently no plans to make it configurable... 😢
As a small bonus, here is a list of hidden settings you can configure. See what you have:
xfconf-query -c thunar -lvInfo shown in statusbar ∆
This is the information shown when a file is selected. If the file name is very long more important information will get ellipsized away.
I prefer it like this: Size (human readable only, binary) | Type | Last modified
xfconf-query -c thunar -p /misc-status-bar-active-info -s 21The numeric value in the end is a sort of bitmask and goes from 0 to 31. A restart after changing it is not required, just highlight a different file to see the result.
I just found out that this can also be changed by right-clicking the status bar.
Tumbler ∆
Tumbler is Thunar's own thumbnailer. By default it only starts up when thunar is running. Configuration:
mkdir -p $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/tumbler
cp /etc/xdg/tumbler/tumbler.rc $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/tumbler/Then edit $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/tumbler/tumbler.rc.
I found documentation for tumbler here and here.
Disable thumbnail generation for remote files ∆
There's a setting for this:
Preferences => Display => Show Thumbnails: Local files only
It relies on GVFS.
Disable thumbnail generation for certain directories ∆
It is also possible to tell each enabled thumbnailer to exclude certain directories:
# Supports all type GdkPixbuf supports
[PixbufThumbnailer]
Disabled=false
Priority=2
Locations=
Excludes=~/Music;~/mnt
MaxFileSize=0