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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:

  1. From the GUI application xfce4-settings-editor
  2. 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.

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Hidden Settings List

Below a table of the settings. These settings are defined in https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/thunar/-/blob/master/thunar/thunar-preferences.c

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_confirm_move_to_trash bool If true enables a confirmation to move files to trash (similar to permanently delete) New in thunar 4.18.x
/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_folder_item_count str Tells when the size column of folders should show the number of containing files THUNAR_TYPE_FOLDER_ITEM_COUNT, THUNAR_FOLDER_ITEM_COUNT_NEVER New in thunar 4.18.x
/misc_folders_first bool Whether to sort folders before files.
/misc_full_path_in_tab_title bool Show the full directory path in the tab title, instead of only the directory name. New in thunar 4.18.x
/misc_full_path_in_window_title bool Show the full directory path in the window title, instead of only the directory name. New in thunar 4.18.x
/misc_highlighting_enabled bool If true file highlighting feature across the various views is enabled. Can be toggled using the View > Show File Highlight. New in thunar 4.18.x
/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_preview_full str Whether the image preview functionality uses its own sidepane or is embedded in the left sidepane. THUNAR_TYPE_IMAGE_PREVIEW_MODE, HUNAR_IMAGE_PREVIEW_MODE_EMBEDDED New in thunar 4.18.x
/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_open_new_windows_in_split_view bool If true, all thunar windows will have split view enabled. New in thunar 4.18.x
/misc_recursive_permissions str Whether to apply permissions recursively every time the permissions are altered by the user. THUNAR_TYPE_RECURSIVE_PERMISSIONS, THUNAR_RECURSIVE_PERMISSIONS_ASK
/misc_recursive_search str Whether to search only in the current folder or recursively. THUNAR_TYPE_RECURSIVE_SEARCH, THUNAR_RECURSIVE_SEARCH_ALWAYS New in thunar 4.18.x
/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_status_bar_active_info int What kind of info is presented in the statusbar. New in thunar 4.18.x
/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-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_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_thumbnail_max_file_size int Maximum file size (in bytes) allowed to be thumbnailed. 0 means no limit is in place. New in thunar 4.18.x
/misc_transfer_use_partial str Whether to use intermediate file(*.partial~) to copy. THUNAR_TYPE_USE_PARTIAL_MODE, THUNAR_USE_PARTIAL_MODE_DISABLED New in thunar 4.18.x
/misc_transfer_verify_file str Whether to verify copied file with checksum. THUNAR_TYPE_VERIFY_FILE_MODE, THUNAR_VERIFY_FILE_MODE_DISABLED New in thunar 4.18.x
/misc_undo_redo_history_size int Maximum number of ThunarJobOperations which can be undone/redone -1 for unlimited New in thunar 4.18.x
/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).

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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

For additional usage information, see the xfconf-query reference page.

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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):

  1. Create a file ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css
  2. Paste following content in this file:
  3. Save and restart thunar (thunar -q; thunar)
* {
   -ThunarAbstractIconView-row-spacing: 70;
   -ThunarAbstractIconView-column-spacing: 30;
 }

For thunar Thunar 1.6.x (gtk2 based):

  1. Create a file ~/.gtkrc-2.0
  2. Paste following content in this file:
  3. 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.

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