Browsing and views

Moving around

• The address shows where you are as a trail. Click a step to go there; each › lists the folders inside the step before it. The trail starts at the sidebar place that holds the folder (Home › Documents); Settings › Appearance can show the full path from / instead.
• Type in the address to filter the folder as you type; Esc shows everything again. A path goes there, > hands the rest to the command palette, and AltEnter searches your home folder.
• Type the first letters of a name in the list to go to it.
• Jump (CtrlJ) finds a folder you used before by a few letters of its name, from zoxide and your desktop’s recent files.
• Recent, in the sidebar, lists the files your desktop says you used lately.

The sidebar

Groups of places: your folders, what you kept (bookmarks, searches, tags), Recent, the Trash and your drives. Fold a group by clicking its header, drag it to move it, and hide the ones you don’t use from the sidebar’s menu. Drop a folder on the sidebar to bookmark it. Renaming a place (F2) never renames its folder.

Drives are listed whether they are mounted or not. Click one to mount it; a locked drive asks for its passphrase. A drive mounted for you has an eject button, which writes out what is pending before unmounting it.

F9 shows or hides the sidebar, and F6 gives it the keyboard: the arrows walk it, Enter opens a place, Esc goes back to the files.

Tabs and two panes

• CtrlT opens a tab, CtrlW closes it, CtrlShiftT reopens the last one closed. Middle-click or CtrlEnter opens a folder in a new tab.
• F3 (or the Split button) splits the window into two panes, each with its own folder and view; ShiftF3 splits it the other way. Tab moves between them, and ShiftF5 or ShiftF6 copies or moves the selection to the other pane.
• More › Layout (the ⋯ button) chooses where the second pane and the preview go, or lets Skwir follow the window’s shape.

Views

The buttons in each pane’s bar switch between a list, a grid and columns. The View menu at the end of the bar has every view, the sort, hidden files (CtrlH) and the zoom (Ctrl=, Ctrl-, Ctrl0). Ctrl1 to Ctrl5 pick the list, grid, columns, Usage and Map.

Where files from many folders are listed (a search, a tag, the Shelf, Recent), a Folder column says where each one is, and Show in Folder (CtrlAltO) goes there.

Usage

Usage draws the folder as blocks as large as the room they take, with what each folder holds drawn inside it, three levels deep (the zoom draws more or fewer). It counts as you look.

• Size, Files, Age and Types, beside the summary, size the blocks by room or by number of files, or color them by when they last changed or by the kind of files that fill them.
• Point at a block to read what it is and its share of its folder. Click selects it; a double click goes into it.
• A dashed outline marks a cache or a trash: room you can have back without losing anything you keep.
• Where files also have names elsewhere (hard links), Usage says what deleting a folder would really free. Moving files to the Trash frees nothing until it is emptied.

Map and timeline

Map places a folder’s photos, videos, tracks and flight plans where they were taken. Its background is drawn offline from data Skwir carries; one that downloads tiles (OpenStreetMap, or a server you add) is used only once you choose it in Settings › Map backgrounds.

The timeline (CtrlShiftL) shows when the folder’s files changed, a bar per period. Click a bar to search it.

The terminal

F4 opens a terminal at the bottom of the window, in the folder shown. It follows you as you browse, and the pane follows a cd. Ctrl+click a path it prints to go there. ShiftF4 opens your desktop’s terminal instead.