Orchard Commander

Chapter 12

Settings

To open the Settings window, press ⌘, / Ctrl+,, or choose Options → Settings… (on macOS also Orchard Commander → Settings…).

Changes take effect immediately and are saved automatically. Close the window with Close.

The window has three pages: Appearance, Preview and Terminal.

Appearance

The Sample panel on the right shows the effect of your changes.

Color scheme

Setting Description
Scheme The color scheme in use
Follow the system's light / dark mode Use one scheme in light mode and another in dark mode, switching with the system
Light mode / Dark mode The schemes to use when following the system
Edit… Change the colors of the scheme next to it (see Custom color schemes)

Built-in schemes: monokai (default), dracula, nord, gruvbox, tokyo-night, commander (white on blue, the classic look), solarized-light and paper.

To try schemes quickly, choose Options → Choose color scheme…. The window shows each scheme as you move through the list. Press Enter to keep the selected scheme, or Esc to return to the previous one.

Font

Setting Description
Typeface The font for the whole window, including the terminal. The list contains monospaced fonts.
Include proportional fonts Also list fonts that aren't monospaced
Style For example Regular, Light or Medium, depending on the font
Size 7 to 40 points. You can also use ⌘=, ⌘- and ⌘0 / Ctrl+=, Ctrl+- and Ctrl+0.
Line spacing The height of every row in the window, from 0.8 to 2.0 times the font height

Window

Setting Description
Frames The style of the panel borders: Rounded, Single line, Double line or Heavy
Always show the menu bar Show the menu bar in the window at all times. When this is off, press F9 to show it.

Restore defaults resets all appearance settings.

Preview

Setting Description
Start playing as soon as a file is selected (autoplay) Audio and video start without pressing Space. Same as the Autoplay switch in the player.
Play the next file when one ends Select and play the next audio or video file in the panel. When this is off, videos repeat.

Terminal

Setting Description
Shell The command that starts the shell. Leave empty to use your login shell (PowerShell on Windows). Applies to new sessions.
Link each side's terminal and panel folders Changing the folder in the shell moves the panel, and moving the panel changes the shell's folder

Custom color schemes

Editing a scheme

  1. In Settings → Appearance, click Edit… next to the scheme.
  2. Change the Name if you want to save the scheme under a new name.
  3. Click a color swatch to open the color picker, or type a hex value such as #272822. The picker has basic colors, a hue and saturation field, a brightness bar and a field for the hex value. The window shows the change immediately.
  4. Choose Syntax colors for highlighted source code in previews.
  5. Select Dark scheme if the scheme has a dark background.
  6. Click Save color scheme.

Changes to a built-in scheme are saved as a new scheme; the built-in scheme stays unchanged. To delete one of your own schemes, open it with Edit… and click Delete color scheme. This deletes the scheme's file.

Scheme files

Your color schemes are stored as TOML files in the color-schemes folder of the settings folder (see below). You can copy these files to another computer, or write them yourself. A scheme file looks like this:

toml
name = "harbor"
dark = true
pygments_style = "monokai"

background = "#1e2127"
surface = "#262a31"
foreground = "#d7dae0"
accent = "#e5c07b"
border_active = "#61afef"

Colors you leave out are taken from the default dark or light scheme, depending on dark. The available colors are:

Key Used for
background Window background
surface Panel background
foreground Text
muted Secondary text
accent Headers and titles
border Border
border_active Border of the active panel
cursor_bg Cursor
cursor_fg Text under the cursor
cursor_inactive_bg Cursor in the inactive panel
dir Folders
exec Executable files
link Symbolic links
hidden Hidden files
marked Marked files
error Error messages
warning Warnings
success Success messages
footer_bg Function-key bar background
footer_fg Function-key bar text
footer_key Function-key bar keys

pygments_style is the name of a Pygments style, which colors source code in previews.

Where settings are stored

System Settings folder
macOS ~/Library/Application Support/Orchard Commander
Windows %LOCALAPPDATA%\Orchard Commander
Linux ~/.config/orchard-commander

The folder contains:

File Contents
settings.json Settings, last folders, window size and position
bookmarks.json Bookmarks
connections.json Saved server connections (without passwords)
known_hosts SFTP server keys you have trusted
color-schemes/ Your color schemes

Passwords are stored in the system keychain, not in these files.

To reset Orchard Commander to its defaults, quit the app and delete settings.json.

About and licenses

Options → About Orchard Commander… (on macOS Orchard Commander → About Orchard Commander) shows the version and the third-party components. Click Show licenses to open the folder with their license texts.