dired-hist

Adds two commands: "back" and "forward", as buttons in every modern file managers: Thunar, Microsoft Explorer, Nautilus, Konqueror.

Emacs Minor mode for Dired built-in file manager, that traverse buffer history (or just path) according to history.

Original author is Karthik Chikmagalur https://github.com/karthink/dired-hist

Tested with Emacs 29.2.

Features

• supported for two Dired modes: open folder in new buffer or in the same (dired-kill-when-opening-new-dired-buffer)
• if buffer is closed we remove his record from history
• history is global only for now

Configuration

(require 'dired-hist)
(add-hook 'dired-mode-hook #'dired-hist-mode)
(define-key dired-mode-map (kbd "l") #'dired-hist-go-back)
(define-key dired-mode-map (kbd "r") #'dired-hist-go-forward)
(define-key dired-mode-map (kbd "C-c '") #'dired-hist-debug-activate)

Note: l and r keys are the defaults for info-mode, help-mode and eww, as well as for external packages like pdf-tools.

Consider instead "C-M-a" and "C-M-e".

TODO

• simplify code, but raise required Emacs version. (26.1 for now)
• New feature: Allow to show history with help of tab-line-mode for dired-kill-when-opening-new-dired-buffer with t

Alternative implementation based on tab-line-mode

Pros:

• history is visible in tabs
• relatively simplier
• allow to to use two keys ("prev", "next") to switch between history and all tabs.

Cons:

• support for only dired-kill-when-opening-new-dired-buffer is nil (default of Dired).
• bound to Tab Line mode and harder to customize.

Featurs for alternative implementation

• History showed with tabs in every Dired window
• Tabs are sorted in order of creation, just as history
• Should be compatible with global-tab-line-mode
• Going back and up carefully programmed
• Working under root console and terminal (theme modus-vivendi)

Configuration for alternative implementation

(require 'dired-hist-tl)
(add-hook 'dired-mode-hook #'dired-hist-tl-dired-mode-hook)
(define-key dired-mode-map (kbd "RET") #'dired-hist-tl-dired-find-file)
(define-key dired-mode-map (kbd "^") #'dired-hist-tl-dired-up-directory)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-M-a") #'dired-hist-tl-tab-line-switch-to-prev-tab)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-M-e") #'dired-hist-tl-tab-line-switch-to-next-tab)

Other packages with own history implementation

• diredc - diredc-history-mode - Midnight Commander features (plus) for dired
• dirvish - extensions/dirvish-history.el - A modern file manager based on dired mode
• https://github.com/sunrise-commander/sunrise-commander

Alternative implementation screenshot