Chapter 02

Navigating

Moving the cursor

On Mac keyboards without Home and End keys, press fn+← and fn+→.

Opening folders

• To open the folder under the cursor, press Enter or double-click it.
• To go to the parent folder, press Backspace, or open the .. entry at the top of the list. The cursor is placed on the folder you came from.
• On Windows, going up from a drive's top folder (such as C:\) shows Drives, a list of all your drives (C:, D:, …). Open one to go to that drive. Drives can't be moved, deleted or renamed from this list.

Archives open like folders; see Archives.

Pressing Enter on a file opens it with its default application. See Opening files.

Going to a specific folder

1. Press ⌘G / Ctrl+G.
2. Type the path of a folder, for example ~/Documents/Invoices or D:\Projects, or a server address such as sftp://anna@example.com/var/www.
3. Press Enter.

The active panel opens the folder. A relative path such as src/app or ../other is resolved from the active panel's folder. Server addresses are described in Servers.

Choosing a drive or location

Press ⌥F1 / Alt+F1 for the left panel or ⌥F2 / Alt+F2 for the right panel. The list contains:

• your drives (Windows) or the file system root, your home folder and mounted volumes (macOS and Linux),
• your saved server connections, marked ⇄,
• your bookmarks, marked ★.

Select an entry and press Enter.

Showing the same folder in both panels

Transferring a folder to the other panel

⌘← / Ctrl+← and ⌘→ / Ctrl+→ send a location to the left or right panel:

• If you press the key while working in the other panel, the target panel opens the folder or archive under the cursor. If the cursor is on a file, the target panel opens the folder that contains it.
• If you press the key while working in the target panel itself, it opens the folder shown in the other panel.

For example, with the cursor on Photos in the left panel, ⌘→ / Ctrl+→ opens Photos in the right panel.

Sorting

Click a column header (Name, Size or Modified) to sort by that column. Click the same header again to reverse the order. Folders always come before files.

Sorting reorders the entries already shown; the folder is not read again, so on a server there is no wait. The sort order is not saved: each panel starts sorted by name.

Hidden files

Hidden files (names starting with a dot, and files with the hidden attribute on Windows) are shown by default, in a dimmer color. To show or hide them, press ⇧⌘. / Ctrl+Shift+. (on Windows and Linux also Ctrl+H). The setting applies to both panels and is remembered.

Refreshing

The panels update automatically when the contents of a local folder change. To re-read both folders manually, for example on a server, press ⌘R / Ctrl+R.

Online-only files

Files in folders kept in sync by a cloud storage app can be stored online only. The panel marks these files with ☁ next to the size. They are listed normally but downloaded only when you open, copy or preview them. See Cloud files.

Zooming

The font size applies to the whole window and is saved.

Where the app starts

When you start Orchard Commander, each panel opens the last local folder it showed. Folders on servers and inside archives are not restored; the panel opens the nearest local folder instead.