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Thunar - Advanced Settings
Most Thunar settings can be configured within Thunar from the menu by selecting Menu → Edit → Preferences. This will display the Preferences dialog window. Some of Thunar's settings are not visible in this interface because they are considered not general enough for the average user.
Viewing advanced Thunar settings
Thunar's advanced settings can be accessed in two ways:
- From the GUI application xfce4-settings-editor
- From the CLI using xfconf-query
In the xfce4-settings-editor, select the Thunar channel in order to see which settings are currently stored and to modify them. Make sure to quit Thunar before with “thunar -q”. Otherwise your changes will have no effect.
For xfconf-query, open a terminal window and issue the command: xfconf-query –channel thunar -lv for a list of the current advanced settings and their respective values.
Hidden Settings List
Below a table of the settings:
| Property | Value Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| /misc-always-show-tabs | bool | If the view tabs should always be visible. |
| /misc-case-sensitive | bool | Determines whether the sorting should be done in a case-sensitive manner. The default is false. |
| /misc-compact-view-max-chars | int | Number of filename characters to show in compact view. Ellipsization will be used if the filename is longer than the defined value. Set to 0 to prevent any ellipsization. Available since thunar 4.17.x |
| /misc_confirm_close_multiple_tabs | bool | Ask the user for confirmation before closing a window with multiple tabs. |
| /misc_date_custom_style | str | If 'custom' is selected as date format, this date-style will be used: “%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S” |
| /misc-exec-shell-scripts-by-default | bool | Whether shell scripts should be executed or opened by default. The default action is to open them; setting this to TRUE will allow executing them. |
| /misc_file_size_binary | bool | Show file size in binary format instead of decimal. |
| /misc_folders_first | bool | Whether to sort folders before files. |
| /misc-full-path-in-title | bool | Show the full directory path in the window title, instead of only the directory name. |
| /misc-horizontal-wheel-navigates | bool | Controls whether the horizontal mouse wheel is used to navigate back and forth within a Thunar view, or whether it should be used for horizontal scrolling. |
| /misc-image-size-in-statusbar | bool | Show the image size in the statusbar when a single image file is selected in the view. This is disabled by default because it causes relatively high I/O when changing the selection quickly. |
| /misc_middle_click_in_tab | bool | If middle click opens a folder in a new window (FALSE) or in a new window (TRUE) |
| /misc_open_new_window_as_tab | bool | %TRUE to open a new tab in an existing thunar instance. instead of a new window if a thunar windows already is present |
| /misc_recursive_permissions | enum | Whether to apply permissions recursively every time the permissions are altered by the user. |
| /misc-remember-geometry | bool | Whether Thunar should remember the size of windows and apply that size to new windows. If true the width and height are saved to last-window-width and last-window-height. If false the user may specify the start size in 'last-window-width and 'last-window-height. This option is enabled by default. |
| /misc_show_about_templates | bool | Whether to display the “About Templates” dialog, when opening the Templates folder from the Go menu. |
| /misc_single_click_timeout | int | If single-click mode is enabled this is the amount of time in milliseconds after which the item under the mouse cursor will be selected automatically. A value of %0 disables the automatic selection. |
| /misc-small-toolbar-icons | bool | Use small icons on the toolbar instead of the default toolbar size. |
| /misc-tab-close-middle-click | bool | Whether to close tabs when the tab label is clicked with the 2nd/middle-mouse-button. |
| /misc_text_beside_icons | bool | Whether the icon view should display the file names beside the file icons instead of below the file icons. |
| /misc-switch-to-new-tab | bool | Whether if new tabs should be directly opened. The default is 'TRUE'. Available since thunar 4.17.2 |
| /misc_thumbnail_draw_frames | bool | Whether to draw black frames around thumbnails. This looks neat, but will delay the first draw a bit. May have an impact on older systems, on folders with many pictures. |
| /misc-vertical-split-pane | bool | Whether on F3 the panes should be split vertically or horizontally. Available since thunar 4.17.8 |
| /misc_volume_management | bool | Whether to enable volume management capabilities (requires HAL and the thunar-volman package). |
Enabling/Adding Hidden Settings
The hidden settings need to be specifically added/enabled in the settings channel of Thunar in order to enable, or change their functionality.
The quickest way to change a hidden settings is to run a command in the terminal-emulator.
xfconf-query --channel thunar --property /property-name --create --type value-type --set new-value
So to enable the image size in the statusbar, run the following command:
xfconf-query --channel thunar --property /misc-image-size-in-statusbar --create --type bool --set true
All hidden settings are boolean values, so the value can either be true to enable the functionality or false to disable.
Customising Thunar with CSS
For most graphical elements of Thunar (and all other gtk3 applications) , it is possible to customize them via CSS, as it is done with themes.
Here an example for Thunar 1.8.x (gtk3 based):
- Create a file ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css
- Paste following content in this file:
- Save and restart thunar (thunar -q; thunar)
* {
-ThunarAbstractIconView-row-spacing: 70;
-ThunarAbstractIconView-column-spacing: 30;
}
For thunar Thunar 1.6.x (gtk2 based):
- Create a file ~/.gtkrc-2.0
- Paste following content in this file:
- Save and restart thunar (thunar -q; thunar)
style "thunar-spaced-out-icons"
{
ThunarIconView::column-spacing = 70
ThunarIconView::row-spacing = 30
}
class "ThunarIconView" style "thunar-spaced-out-icons"
Check the GTK+ CSS Overview page to see learn how CSS can be used in gtk3.
Use the GTK Inspector together with thunar to see which properties can be modified on each element.