Chapter 04

Previewing files

Opening the Preview view

The Preview view shows the file under the cursor in the other side's panel and follows the cursor as you move it.

Press F3 to show the preview on the side you are not working in. Press F3 again to return that side to its file list.
Or click the Preview tab at the top of a side. Click Files to go back.

Only one side can show a preview at a time. The preview's title shows the file name, and the bottom line shows the file size and type.

To use the keys of a preview, such as page turning in a PDF or the player keys, press Tab to move to the preview side. Press Tab again to return to the file list.

What the preview shows

File type	Preview
Text and source code	The text with syntax highlighting. Only the first 1 MB is shown.
Markdown	The rendered document.
Images (PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, SVG, TIFF, BMP; HEIC on macOS)	The image scaled to fit. Animated GIF and WebP images play.
PDF	The pages, fitted to the preview.
Audio (MP3, FLAC, WAV, Ogg, M4A and others)	Title and artist, the waveform of the file, a spectrum analyzer during playback, and player controls.
Video (MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM, AVI and others)	The video with player controls.
Folders and archives	A list of the contents.
Other files	File information and a hex dump of the beginning of the file.

Choosing another view

Some files can be shown in more than one way, for example a Markdown file as the rendered document or as source text, and any file as a hex dump. The available views appear as buttons at the top of the preview, under View as.

Click a button to switch the view.
Or press Shift+F3 to cycle through the views.

Orchard Commander remembers your choice for files with the same extension until you quit.

Images

Right-click an image to:

Open it in the default application, or
Copy the full-size image to the clipboard.

Very large images are decoded at reduced resolution for the preview.

PDF documents

Key	Action
→ ↓ Page Down Space	Next page
← ↑ Page Up Backspace	Previous page
Home / End	First / last page
Scroll wheel	Next / previous page

Audio and video

The player controls are at the bottom of the preview: play/pause, the time, the Autoplay switch and the mute button. For audio, click or drag in the waveform to jump to a position; for video, use the slider.

Key	Action
Space or K	Play / pause
← / →	Back / forward 5 seconds
M	Mute / unmute
A	Turn autoplay on or off

Autoplay

With autoplay on ([x] Autoplay), a file starts playing as soon as you select it. With autoplay off ([ ] Autoplay), press Space to start it. You can also change this in Settings → Preview.

Playing the next file

When a file finishes, the next audio or video file in the panel is selected and starts playing. Other files in between are skipped. Playback stops after the last playable file in the folder. If you move the cursor while a file is playing, the cursor stays where you put it when the file ends.

To turn this off, clear Play the next file when one ends in Settings → Preview. Videos then repeat until you select another file.

Mute

The player starts muted. When you unmute it, it stays unmuted for the following files and the next time you start the app.

Files on servers and in archives

Previews of files on servers and inside archives load only as much of the file as needed. Text and hex previews read the beginning of the file, and audio, video and PDF files are streamed. Images and archives are read completely, up to 512 MB. Audio files on servers show a waveform only if they are 100 MB or smaller.

Cloud files

Files in folders synced by a cloud storage app can be stored online only (marked ☁ in the panel). Previewing such a file downloads it.

Files up to 25 MB are downloaded automatically. While this happens, the preview shows "Downloading name from the cloud" and the time elapsed.
For larger files, the preview shows Download and preview. Click it to download the file and preview it.

If the cloud application doesn't deliver the file in time, the preview says the file hasn't arrived and shows Try again. The download continues in the background. Check that the cloud application is running, signed in and online, then click Try again.