first steps

First steps

Pre-alpha. Parts marked planned describe how rCommander is meant to work; the rest is in the current build.

The window

• Two panels side by side. One is active (highlighted); Tab switches. Commands act on the active panel, and copy or move go from the active panel to the other one.
• The drive bar above each panel (or one above both): drive letters, WSL distributions and your saved servers; a click on an SSH server shows its files.
• The path bar above each list: click a part of the path to go there.
• The menu bar at the top: File, Mark, Commands, Net, View, Configuration and Help, each entry with its key beside it. Alt highlights the bar and Alt with the underlined letter opens a menu (Alt+F opens File); the arrows, Enter and Escape work in it as in any Windows program. Configuration has the settings and Database... for backup and restore, Net the connections. Alt with a letter belongs to the quick search when you set it to Alt+letters, and to the shell while a panel shows a terminal; Alt alone still opens the bar. With the dark theme the bar and its menus are dark, and so is the Explorer's context menu (Windows 10 1903 or later). On Linux rCommander draws the same bar itself, above the drive bar: click a title, or press Alt with its underlined letter (Alt alone does nothing there). Settings > Appearance > Menu bar hides it.
• The status bar at the bottom: news such as a finished backup, and the MCP server's address.
• Tabs above each panel: Ctrl+T opens the folder in a new tab, Ctrl+W closes it, Ctrl+Tab steps through them. See Panels.
• The command line below the panels runs a command in the active panel's folder; typing letters goes there.
• The F-key bar at the bottom: F3 View, F4 Edit, F5 Copy, F6 Move, F7 New folder, F8 Delete. It changes with Shift, Ctrl and Alt and runs a key on a click.
• Dialogs have their title and a close X at the top right. The X and Escape cancel the dialog - Escape works even while you type in one of its fields. Where a question waits inside a dialog, the first Escape answers the question; a running search stops first; a copy in progress goes to the background.
• F10 does what Escape does in a dialog. With no dialog open it quits rCommander; while copies or other jobs still run or wait it asks first (Cancel is the default; the queue continues at the next start); the window's X and Alt+F4 ask the same. In a terminal panel F10 belongs to the shell. Settings > Keyboard narrows F10 to closing dialogs or switches it off; Settings > Transfers switches the question off.
• Everything in a dialog works by keyboard, as in any Windows dialog: Tab and Shift+Tab go round every field, checkbox, list and button, and the one that has the keyboard shows a frame around it. Enter presses that button - from a field or a checkbox, the dialog's main button; Space presses a button or ticks a checkbox; the arrows choose in a list, a drop-down or a group of options. Hold Alt and one letter of most buttons, checkboxes and field captions is underlined: Alt with that letter presses the button, ticks the checkbox or puts the keyboard into the field (without typing the letter); the letter alone does the same once a button or checkbox has the frame. This holds in the file operation dialogs and questions, the progress and queue windows, properties, pack and unpack, checksums, find files, compare and synchronize, the database dialogs, the connection manager and its imports, the login-script editor, quick connect, network drives, the hotlist editor and the settings - also on the Shortcuts tab, where every key goes to the recording while one is recorded. The main button (Enter) and Cancel (Escape) have no letter. Settings > Keyboard keeps the underline always visible. The question of an AI agent (MCP) starts on Deny, and only a click allows a call.

Moving around

• Arrow keys, Page Up/Down, Home and End move the cursor; Enter opens a folder or an archive; Backspace goes up one level.
• Alt+F1 and Alt+F2 open the drive menu of the left and right panel.
• Ctrl+F1 and Ctrl+F2 switch between the brief and the full view; Ctrl+F3 to Ctrl+F6 sort by name, extension, date and size.
• Ctrl+Alt with letters jumps to the first matching name (quick search); Ctrl+S filters the list as you type.
• Ctrl+D opens the directory hotlist, Alt+Left and Alt+Right move through the folder history.
• Ctrl+Shift+A lists the panel's tabs (in a terminal: its sessions). Shift+F10 or the Menu key open the context menu of the file under the cursor, in the drive menu that of a drive. In every menu the arrows and Enter work, and a letter takes the entry that starts with it.

Any key can be changed under Settings > Keyboard > Shortcuts (see Settings). All keys are listed in Keyboard shortcuts, and Ctrl+Shift+P finds any action by name.

Selecting and copying

Ins or Space selects the file under the cursor, Num + and Num - select or deselect by a mask such as *.txt, Num * inverts. F5 copies the selection (or the file under the cursor) to the other panel, F6 moves it; a dialog shows the target and lets you change it. A copy shows its progress and can go to the background; a conflict shows both files and asks what to do, also for all the rest. F7 makes a folder, F8 or Delete moves to the recycle bin after a question, Shift+F8 deletes for good. F2 in the copy dialog queues the job instead; Ctrl+Shift+Q shows the queue. Files can also be dragged between the panels and to or from the Explorer. Details: Panels.

The command palette

Ctrl+Shift+P opens the command palette: type part of an action's name or a key, choose with the arrows, Enter runs it as its key would. It also lists the actions that have no key, the settings and the database dialog - the quickest way to find something without the mouse.

A terminal instead of files

Any panel can show a terminal instead of the file list — PowerShell, cmd or a WSL shell, starting in the panel's folder. Ctrl+Ö (Ctrl+; on a US keyboard) switches the active panel to a terminal and back; Ctrl+Shift+Ö (Ctrl+Shift+;) asks which shell to start. See Terminal.

Servers

Ctrl+F opens the connection manager, where you keep your SSH and FTP servers in folders; the ones you mark appear in the drive bar. Enter on an SSH server shows its files over SFTP in the active panel, Terminal opens a shell on it, and Ctrl+N connects to a server that is not saved. See Connections.

Settings

Choose Configuration > Settings... in the menu bar (or Settings in the command palette). The settings open in a window of their own, with a title bar and a close X: move it, resize it, and it opens where you left it next time. It has its own entry in Alt+Tab and the taskbar, and the main window waits while it is open. Several pages, with OK, Cancel and Apply; Escape or the X cancel.

Page	What you set
Appearance	Four tabs. Theme and window: the Language - Automatic (Windows' language when rCommander has it, else English), English, Deutsch, Français or Español; it takes effect at the next start - and the theme - Light, Dark or System; System follows Windows' light or dark mode, also when you change it while rCommander runs; the accent colour is Windows' own - the Menu bar (on by default; every command keeps its key and its row in the command palette), the function-key bar and dialogs in windows of their own. Fonts: a font and a size (8-24) each for the file list, the terminal and the viewer, chosen from the installed fonts; Monospaced fonts only narrows the list, a sample line shows the choice, rows grow with the size, and a font that is no longer installed falls back to the default. Panels and lists: Alternate row colours (on by default), the file icons, how long names are shortened, the column widths, the Owner column and the drive line. Viewer: the Markdown preview, pictures, .nfo art and the text size.
Keyboard	Two tabs. General: what F10 does and whether the underlined menu letters always show. Shortcuts: every key of rCommander in a table - search by name or by key, Change key (press the new one), Add key for a second key, Remove key, Reset one row or Reset all. Changed rows are marked; a key already in use asks before it moves; a punctuation key, an umlaut or an accent key you press is kept by where it sits, so it stays on that key when you switch the keyboard layout; keys the window needs itself (Tab, Escape, Alt with a letter, Ctrl+C/X/V and a few more) are locked, the reason in a tooltip. Your keys survive updates and go with the settings export; menus, context menus, the palette and the function-key bar show them at once. A terminal that is already open keeps its old keys until it is opened again.
Folders	The folder each panel starts in (empty: your home folder), how quick search starts and matches, and Num+, Num- and Shift+F2 select folders too (off by default).
Terminal	The default shell of a new terminal, and whether panel and terminal follow each other's folder.
Programs	The viewer (F3; empty: rCommander's own Lister) and the editor (F4; empty: Notepad).
Transfers	The copy buffer, how many copies and moves run at once per server and in all, how often a transfer tries again after a lost connection, and how long it first waits.
Plugins	Two tabs: Installed - install, the list of plugins and the selected one's details and own settings - and Global settings for all plugins. Configuration > Plugins... opens it directly. See Plugins.
Import	Import from Total Commander...: the directory hotlist, the folder tabs, the list colours and font, and the FTP, FTPS and SFTP connections, with a preview before anything is imported. See Connections.
Vault	After how many minutes without your use the vault locks (0: never); the longest time it stays unlocked at all (default 8 hours, 0: no limit); and whether it locks when Windows locks (Win+L) or goes to sleep (on by default).
Retention	How many rows and days the error log keeps; see Database.
MCP server	The server on or off, its port, the access token (copy, new token) and the rights of the tools per kind. See MCP server.
About	Two tabs. About: the logo, version, commit, build time and platform, the addresses (marked not yet published while the repository is private), the author and the licence; Copy version info puts the version line on the clipboard for a bug report. Licences: every crate rCommander is built from with its licence, with a filter. The command palette opens it as About rCommander.

A page with tabs (Appearance, Keyboard, Plugins, About) switches them with Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab, or with the arrows once the row of tabs has the focus; the tab you chose stays chosen until rCommander closes.

A field that takes a file or folder (start folders, viewer, editor) has Browse... beside it, which opens Windows' own file or folder dialog; typing the path still works.

Most changes take effect at once, the theme and fonts included; a setting that needs a restart says so. The settings of the pages Vault and MCP server can only be changed here, never by an AI assistant.