panels

Panels

Pre-alpha. Everything on this page is in the current build except the section Planned at the end. SSH servers open in a panel over SFTP, FTP and FTPS servers over FTP; F5 and F6 copy and move between this machine and servers, and a broken transfer resumes where it stopped.

The two panels

• Two panels side by side, each starting in its start folder (your home folder unless you set another in the settings). Exactly one is active and marked; Tab switches. The window title shows the name, version and author ("rCommander 0.1.0 - © Alexander Herling"), as Total Commander's shows its own name.
• The path bar above each list shows the folder as segments: click one to go there. Click the free space after the last segment and the bar turns into a Go to: field for a typed path, also a server's as sftp://<connection name>/<path> or ftp://<connection name>/<path>; Enter goes, Esc cancels.
• A .. row heads every folder that has a parent, as in Total Commander: Enter on it goes up, and after going up the cursor stands on the folder you came from.
• The window remembers its size, position and whether it was maximized.
• A terminal in the panel: Ctrl+Ö / Ctrl+; switches a panel to a shell in its folder and back; see Terminal.
• An AI assistant can drive the panels through the MCP server inside the app (the status bar shows its address); an assistant's navigate moves the panel you are looking at. See MCP server.

Views

Each panel has its own view and sort order.

• Full view (Ctrl+F2): one row per entry with name, extension, size and date. Folders show <DIR> in the size column.
• Brief view (Ctrl+F1): names only, in as many columns as fit; folders are shown as [name]. Left and Right move between the columns.
• Both views draw only the rows you see, so large folders scroll without waiting.
• The scroll bar works as in Windows: drag its thumb and the list follows until you let go, even with the pointer off the bar; a click above or below the thumb scrolls a screen.
• Columns never overlap: each cell stays inside its column. A name too long for it is shortened at its end (Board.Games.2019…); rest the pointer on it for half a second and the full name shows. Settings > Appearance has Shorten long file names (at the end or in the middle, so start and end stay readable) and the tooltip's delay. Extension, size and date keep their width; the name takes the rest.
• Column widths: drag the gap to the left of a column's title to make that column wider or narrower; the name column gives or takes the difference, and no column gets narrower than it can show. A double click on the gap sets the column back to its default width. The widths are the same for both panels and are kept across restarts.
• The divider between the panels: drag the gap between them to share the width differently (each panel keeps at least a usable width); a double click puts it back in the middle. The share is kept across restarts. While a terminal fills both panels (Ctrl+Ä / Ctrl+') there is no divider.
• Every other row is lightly tinted so the eye keeps its line; the cursor and marked files always show their own colour. Turn it off under Settings, Appearance, Alternate row colours.
• Your own colours, as in Total Commander: Settings, Appearance, tab Colours sets, for the light and the dark look each, the lists' text, background and second background, the cursor in the active and in the other panel, the cursor's text, the colour of marked names and the accent. Each has a swatch, Choose... - Windows' colour dialog, with the basic colours, the spectrum and your custom colours -, its #rrggbb (empty: the look's own) and Reset; a preview under each look shows the list as it will be and warns when text gets hard to read (contrast below 4.5:1). The colours apply to the panels and lists, never to the dialogs.
• Colours by file type: below them, Colours by file type holds rules - a mask as for Num+ (*.exe;*.bat, *\ for folders, | before exclusions) with a colour for the light look and one for the dark (empty: the light one); ... beside a colour opens the colour dialog for it. A name - and its extension in the full view - takes the colour of the first rule it matches; Up and Down change the order, Add rule and Remove the list. A marked name keeps the marked colour.
• Sizes read as B, KiB, MiB, GiB; dates follow the order of your system's language.
• An Owner column shows user and group (alice:staff) where they are known: on an SFTP server, and local folders on Linux and macOS. It is off at first; turn it on under Settings, Appearance, Owner column. Its width is dragged like the others.

Sorting

Key	Sorts by
Ctrl+F3	Name
Ctrl+F4	Extension
Ctrl+F5	Date (newest first)
Ctrl+F6	Size (largest first)

A click anywhere on a column title sorts by that column. The same key or header again turns the order around; the header marks the column and direction with ▲ or ▼. Folders always stay on top, .. first, and names sort naturally, ignoring case: file2 comes before file10. As in Explorer and Total Commander, names starting with a symbol such as _ come before those starting with a digit, and digits before letters; hyphens and apostrophes count only between names that are otherwise the same, so --- incoming --- sorts by its leading blank, first. Settings, page Folders: Sort names can sort like Linux instead (the byte order of ls, capitals first) or by the panel's target - Windows' order on this computer's drives, Linux' on SSH and FTP servers and inside WSL; Sort numbers by their value off sorts file10 before file2. The cursor stays on its entry when the order changes.

Selecting

Key	Action
Ins	Select or deselect the entry under the cursor and move down
Space	The same; on a folder it also counts the folder's size into the size column. With Space moves the cursor to the next entry off (Settings, Folders), the cursor stays on the entry
Shift+arrows, Shift+PgUp/PgDn, Shift+Home/End	Select while moving
Num +	Select group: select the files matching a mask
Num -	Unselect group: deselect the files matching a mask
Num *	Invert the selection
Ctrl+A, Ctrl+Num +	Select all
Ctrl+Num -	Deselect all
Alt+Num + / Alt+Num -	Select / deselect every file with the extension of the one under the cursor
Num /	Select again what the last file operation took

Masks follow Total Commander: * and ? as wildcards, several masks separated by ; or spaces, a mask with spaces in double quotes, and exclusions after | - for example *.txt *.md|draft* or "my notes*";*.md. The same rules hold in the search, the unpack mask and synchronizing. A mask applies to files only; one that ends in \ applies to folders only. With Num+, Num- and Shift+F2 select folders too on (Settings, page Folders; off by default) a mask without \ takes folders of a fitting name too, *.* every folder but ... The mask field opens in the panel with your last mask; Up and Down go through the last 20 masks, and the four newest stand beside the field to click. Enter applies it, Esc cancels.

Shift with the arrows gives the entries you pass the opposite of the cursor entry's state, as in Total Commander, so the same keys select and deselect a range.

With the mouse you select as in the Explorer, in the full and the brief view alike:

Mouse	Action
Click	Put the cursor on the row; the selection stays
Ctrl+click	Select or deselect the row; the rest of the selection stays
Shift+click	Select the rows from the last row you clicked (or the cursor) to this one, in place of the selection before
Ctrl+Shift+click	Add those rows to the selection

The cursor goes to the row you click, and .. is never selected. A plain click keeps the selection, as in Total Commander; turn on A click clears the selection (as in Explorer) (Settings, page Folders; off by default) to have it cleared as in the Explorer. A click on a selected row clears it only when you let go without dragging, so you can still drag all selected rows at once. A click with Ctrl or Shift never starts a drag.

The status line under each panel sums the selection against the whole folder, for example 1.2 MiB of 40 MiB in 3 of 120 files, 0 of 8 folders.

Opening files

• Enter or a double-click on a folder opens it; on a file it starts a program or opens the file in the program Windows associates with it.
• Enter on a zip, 7z or tar archive opens it like a folder; see Archives.
• Ctrl+PgDn opens only folders and archives, never starts a program.
• Backspace or Ctrl+PgUp goes up one level, Ctrl+\ to the root of the drive.
• F2 or Ctrl+R reads the folder again, keeping cursor and selection where they can stay.
• A folder that cannot be read shows its message in the panel; the panel stays usable.

Hidden and system files

Hidden files (the hidden or system attribute on Windows, a leading dot elsewhere) are hidden by default, as in Total Commander. The status line has a switch, Hidden files: hidden / shown; it applies to both panels and is kept across restarts. There is no default key for it, as in Total Commander (Ctrl+H stays free). Shown, a hidden or system file or folder has its icon faded with a red ! over it, as in Total Commander (Mark hidden and system files with !, Settings, page Appearance).

Drive bar

Above each panel sits a drive bar; the button at its end switches to one bar above both panels and back, and the choice is kept. When a bar is too narrow for every drive, it shows the drives that fit, in their order, and ends with », which opens the drive menu with all of them. From the keyboard, Alt+F1 and Alt+F2 open the same menu; Shift+F10 or the Menu key in it open the context menu of the drive under the cursor, as a right click on the drive does.

• Drives: every drive letter with a symbol for its kind - fixed, removable, network, CD/DVD, RAM disk. A click shows the drive in that panel (with one shared bar: in the active panel). The panel's current drive is filled.
• WSL: the WSL distributions installed on this machine; a click opens \\wsl.localhost\<distro>\.
• Servers: the connections marked Show in the drive bar in the connection manager (by default those at the top level of the tree) and the quick connections open now (Ctrl+N), each a button of its own; each folder at the top of the tree is one button that opens the drive menu at its servers, which stand indented under the folder's path. A click on a server shows it in that panel (server panels).
• The drive line under the bar stands out from the window; the active panel's is tinted in your accent colour. It shows the panel's drive (a click opens the drive menu), the volume name in brackets - for a server its name, for WSL the distribution - and the free space, for example [System] 42 GiB free of 476 GiB; the tooltip of a drive button says the same. At its right end \ goes to the root of the drive and .. one folder up, as Ctrl+\ and Backspace do; both are greyed out at the root. In a narrow panel the name and the free space are shortened in the middle, and the whole line shows when you point at it. Settings > Appearance switches the volume name and the two buttons off.
• Alt+F1 / Alt+F2 open the drive menu of the left / right panel: arrows, Home and End move, Enter or a drive's letter chooses, Esc closes.
• Network drives: Map network drive... - in the drive menu under the drives, on a right click on a drive, or in the command palette - asks for the folder \\server\share, a free letter and Reconnect at sign-in; Windows itself asks for the user name and password and keeps them, rCommander never sees them. Disconnect network drive... in the same places disconnects one; if files on it are open, rCommander asks whether to disconnect anyway. A network drive's button and tooltip show the share it is mapped to. There is no key of its own. A drive Windows remembers from the last sign-in is in the bar too and connects when you open it, as in the Explorer; Windows asks for the password if it does not have it.
• Back where you were: changing to a drive the other panel shows opens the other panel's folder, as in Total Commander: with the left panel in D:\test, d: in the command line or D: in the right panel's drive bar or drive menu opens D:\test on the right too. Otherwise the panel returns to the folder it last showed on that drive, else the drive's root. Changing to the drive the panel is already on by the drive bar or drive menu leaves it where it is; d: in the command line opens the other panel's folder then too (with the right panel in D:\ and the left in D:\x\y, d: on the right opens D:\x\y) - turn off d: in the command line follows the other panel on the same drive too to leave it there as well. Turn off A drive change goes to the other panel's folder (Settings, page Folders; on by default) to go by the panel's own memory only. WSL distributions and servers count as drives here too.
• No waiting for slow drives. Volume names and free space are asked in the background with a two-second limit; an empty CD drive or a disconnected network drive shows Not ready instead of freezing the window. Network drives are asked only when you open them, so a sleeping share is not woken. New drives (a USB stick) appear within a few seconds.
• A drive or share that stops answering. Every call on this computer's drives and shares has a time limit: opening a folder, a file or its details waits at most 20 seconds for the first answer, and a large folder then has five minutes to list itself. When the limit runs out rCommander says The drive or share did not answer in time; the window stays usable all along. Press Escape while a folder keeps the panel waiting (after half a second) to stop the wait at once; the panel stays where it was. A share that stops answering in the middle of a copy counts as a lost connection: the copy keeps the part it wrote and waits in the queue as resumable.

Tabs

Each panel can hold several folder tabs, as in Total Commander. The tab row appears above the panel as soon as it has two tabs. The active tab is joined to its list, in the list's colour; the others are dimmed. A long folder name is shortened in the middle, and only then is the full path its tooltip.

Key	Action
Ctrl+T	Open the panel's folder in a new tab
Ctrl+Up	Open the folder under the cursor in a new tab
Ctrl+Shift+Up	Open the folder under the cursor in a new tab of the other panel
Ctrl+W	Close the tab (the last one stays)
Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab	Next / previous tab
Ctrl+Shift+A	The list of all the panel's tabs, also those behind » and also with one tab; Ctrl+Up / Ctrl+Down there move the tab under the cursor

• Reorder by dragging: drag a tab along its row and let go where the accent mark shows; a plain click still selects it, Escape or leaving the row cancels. Locked tabs move too, and the order is kept across restarts (Settings, page Folders: Drag tabs to reorder).

• A tab's menu (right click) shows each entry's key, as Windows menus do - Close tab Ctrl+W; so do the file list's own menu and the queue's (Settings, page Keyboard, can hide the keys).

• Too many tabs for the row: a tab is never cut in half. The row shows the tabs that fit (always including the active one) and ends with », which lists every tab of the panel with its full path; choose one with the arrows and Enter, or a click.

• With the mouse: a click shows a tab, a middle click closes it, a right click opens its menu: Lock tab, Copy tab to the other panel, Close tab.

• With the keyboard: in the list of tabs (Ctrl+Shift+A) the arrows or a tab's first letter choose, Enter shows the tab, Delete closes it, and Shift+F10 or the Menu key open its menu.

• A locked tab shows * before its title and keeps its folder: opening another folder from it opens a new tab instead.

• Each tab keeps its own folder, sort order, view and cursor.

• Tabs come back after a restart, locked ones included. A tab whose folder no longer exists opens the nearest folder above it, and the status bar says so.

Folder history

Each tab remembers the last 50 folders it showed.

• Alt+Left / Alt+Right go back and forward.
• Alt+Down lists the tab's folders; choose one with the arrows and Enter.

Directory hotlist

Ctrl+D opens the hotlist, your list of favourite folders: choose one to go there, Add current folder adds the panel's folder, Configure... opens the Directory hotlist dialog. There you rename, reorder (Up, Down), delete and group entries into hotlist folders (New hotlist folder, Move to); an entry can also name a Folder for the other panel, which the other panel opens at the same time.

The hotlist and the folder tabs of Total Commander can be imported; see Import from Total Commander.

Swapping and sending folders

Key	Action
Ctrl+U	Swap the folders of the two panels
Ctrl+Shift+U	Swap the panels' whole tab rows
Ctrl+Left / Ctrl+Right	Show the folder under the cursor (or the active panel's folder) in the left / right panel

File operations

The function-key bar at the bottom of the window shows what F3 to F8 do; hold Shift, Ctrl or Alt and it shows what they do with that key. A click on a button does what the key does. Settings, page Appearance, hides the bar (Show the function-key bar); the keys work either way.

Key	Action
F3	View the file under the cursor: rCommander's own viewer, or the external viewer set in Settings (see Tools)
F4	Edit in your editor (Settings, page Programs; Notepad when empty)
Shift+F4	New text file: asks for a name, creates the file and opens it in the editor
F5	Copy to the other panel
Shift+F5	Copy here: the file beside itself under a new name
F6	Move to the other panel
Shift+F6	Rename in the list; changing only the case of a name works too
F7	New folder; several levels at once, such as a\b\c, and the cursor lands on the new one. The name under the cursor is offered, selected, so typing replaces it; switch that off with F7 offers the name under the cursor (Settings, page Transfers)
F8, Del	Move to the recycle bin, after a question
Shift+F8, Shift+Del	Delete for good, after a warning that this cannot be undone

Where there is no recycle bin - an SFTP or FTP server, a network share or drive, a WSL folder - F8 and Del delete nothing and say that there is no recycle bin; Shift+F8 deletes for good. With Delete for good where there is no recycle bin switched on (Settings, page Transfers), F8 and Del there ask the Shift+F8 question instead - it says the files go for good - and delete permanently after OK. Off by default.

The copy and move dialog shows the target, which you can edit: a relative path counts from the source folder; a folder means into it, and for a single entry a new name copies or moves it under that name. If a file exists at the target presets the answer (Ask, Overwrite all, Skip all, Overwrite older, Rename all), Verify each file after copying reads each copy back, and Keep time stamps and permissions (on) keeps each file's modification time, and its Unix rights between two Unix sides. OK runs the job at once in a small progress window with Pause, Cancel and Background (F2 or Esc) - also while queued jobs write to the same place; it never waits in the queue, but the queue window lists it as Runs at once. F2 in the dialog puts the job into the queue, as in Total Commander: the dialog closes and the job waits behind the others going to the same place. The delete dialogs (F8, Del, Shift+F8, Shift+Del) have F2 too. A new folder (F7), packing and unpacking, checksums, splitting and combining files, synchronizing folders and multi-rename start at once as well, even while a copy writes to the same drive; to queue packing, checksums, sync and multi-rename instead, switch off Packing, checksums, sync and multi-rename run at once (Settings, page Transfers).

The progress window has two bars, as in Total Commander. File is the file being copied, its name above the bar and how much of it is done at the right; it starts again with each file and, for a copy that continues an interrupted one, where the earlier copy stopped. Total is the whole operation - all the files and folders you selected, the ones already done included - with the time since it started beside it, and the files and bytes done, the speed and the time left under it. Speed and time left are those of the whole operation, not of the file at work: copying 1000 files, you see how long all of them will take. While a part of the selection has not been counted yet, the time left reads about ... left. Once a second queue list exists, Queue list for F2 picks the list, and F2 remembers the choice.

Background jobs collect in a bar under the panels; you keep working. Click the bar's count to open or fold it. The bar is a preview of the queue window: open, it lists the window's first five jobs in the window's order, each with Pause and Cancel, and N more in the queue counts what the window lists beyond them (Settings, page Transfers: Jobs listed under the panels). The job in the progress window is not repeated in the bar. On the bar itself, Pause all (or Resume all) and Cancel all act on every job of the bar, Show brings the first of your own jobs back into the progress window, and Queue opens the queue window. Jobs that write to different places run side by side; jobs to the same place (the same drive or server) run one after the other, in the order of the queue. The jobs of one operation confirmed with OK run one after the other: a waiting one you cancel is gone at once, a paused one lets the next go first.

When a target exists, a dialog shows both files (New, Existing) and offers Overwrite, Overwrite all, Skip, Skip all, Overwrite all older, Copy all larger, Copy all smaller, Rename, Rename all, Rename the existing one and Rename to with an editable name. When a file fails, you choose Retry, Skip, Skip all or Cancel.

Afterwards both panels are read again and the copied files are deselected; F6 deselects what it moves as soon as it starts.

Queue window

Ctrl+Shift+Q, or Queue on the background bar, opens the queue window: every job with its kind, source and target, the place it writes to, its state (Waiting, Counting, Running, Waiting for an answer, Done, Cancelled, Failed) and its progress. A running job has an accent stripe at its left and its state in the accent colour. Under it you see the file it is on, under the job's own path, and at the right edge how much is done, the speed and the time left. With more than one job running, the line under the list shows how many run and their speed together (Settings page Transfers, Show the speed of all running jobs together, on). The column of the place a job writes to - Local, a server or share by its name, or Runs at once - is left out while every job listed shares one (Leave out the lane column while all jobs share one lane, on). New jobs join while the queue runs.

Jobs run at once - copies, moves and deletes confirmed with OK rather than F2, new folders, packing, unpacking, checksums, sync and multi-rename - stand at the top of the default list as a group of their own, marked Runs at once where other jobs show the place they write to; finished, they go with the finished jobs. You pause, resume and cancel them like any other job, also with Pause all and Cancel all. They wait for nobody, so they cannot be moved up or down, put into another list or saved with a list: those menu entries are dimmed for them. Settings page Transfers, Show jobs that run at once in the queue (on), switches the group off: the window then lists only the jobs queued with F2, while the bar under the panels still shows every job and its last line says N more in the background.

The queue window is a window of its own: move it, resize it, leave it open and work on in the main window - its keys go to the panels while the queue window does not have the keyboard. It stays above the main window, minimizes with it and opens where you left it. Ctrl+Shift+Q brings it to the front; Escape, F10 or its X close it, and the queue runs on. When a job asks a question while the queue window has the keyboard, the main window comes to the front, where the question is. Settings page Transfers, Queue in a window of its own, switches this off: the queue then opens over the main window as before.

One job per file or folder: copying, moving or deleting several selected files and folders makes each of them a job of its own, side by side and in the order selected (in the queue with F2), so each can be paused, moved, cancelled or removed on its own. They still belong together: an answer for all (Overwrite all, Skip all, ...) holds for every one of them, Cancel in a question or in the progress window stops all of them, and the progress window stays open from the first to the last. Settings page Transfers, One queue job per file or folder, switches this off: the whole selection is then one job, as before.

Several jobs at once: select jobs as in the Explorer or Total Commander - a click selects one, Ctrl+click adds or takes away one, Shift+click selects the range from the job clicked last; Space or Insert selects or deselects the job under the cursor and moves on, Shift+Up / Shift+Down extend the selection, Ctrl+A selects all. The selected jobs are shown in the selection colour, and the line under the list says how many there are. The keys and buttons below work on all of them: they move up, down, to the front or to the end together and keep their order, Move to list puts them into another list, and Delete takes them off the queue. Waiting and finished jobs simply go; if one of them is already running, paused or partly done, rCommander asks once, then cancels it exactly as a single cancel does. Jobs of one copy or move (see below) can be moved or removed one by one - the others stay together.

A right click on a job, Shift+F10 or the context-menu key open the queue's menu for the selection: Move up, Move down, Move to the front, Move to the end, Move to another list, Move to a new list... (asks for the name; the new list waits until you start it), Remove, Select all, Clear this list and Clear all lists. Clearing takes every job off, finished or not; when some have not finished, one question says how many, and running ones are cancelled.

Key	Action
Up / Down	Move the cursor; the selection stays
Shift+Up / Shift+Down	Extend the selection
Space / Insert	Select or deselect the job and go to the next
Ctrl+A	Select all jobs of the list
Ctrl+Up / Ctrl+Down	Move the selected waiting jobs up or down
Ctrl+Home / Ctrl+End	Move the selected waiting jobs to the front (they start next) or to the end
P	Pause or resume the job under the cursor (also an Interrupted transfer)
Delete	Take the selected jobs off; asks first when one of them is running or partly done (the file being written is removed)
Enter	Answer the job's question, such as a conflict
Shift+F10, context-menu key	The queue's menu
Escape	Close the menu, or the window; the jobs go on

A transfer whose connection broke and whose retries are used up waits as Interrupted - resume or cancel; such jobs are kept when rCommander quits and come back paused after the next start (see resume). The buttons do the same, plus one button for the whole queue - Pause all while a job runs or waits, Resume all once everything is paused - and Remove finished.

Queue lists: besides the default list you can keep named lists - New, Rename, Delete (its jobs move to the default list), Start / Stop, Move to list. A new or loaded list waits until you start it; lists that write to the same drive or server share its turn and limits. Save keeps a list's copies and moves (sources, target, options - never a password) and Load brings it back, waiting; Delete saved list asks first, and Load at start (set when saving) loads it after the next start - a notice says how many. A running job keeps its place; a paused waiting job lets the ones behind it go first. In Total Commander Ctrl+Shift+Q opens a separate Quick View window; rCommander shows Quick View in the other panel (Ctrl+Q) instead.

Drag and drop and the clipboard

• Between the panels: drag files onto the other panel and the copy dialog (F5) opens for them; hold Shift when you let go for the move dialog (F6). A selected entry drags the whole selection, an unselected one only itself.
• Out of rCommander (Windows): drag files to the Explorer, the desktop, a mail or a browser's upload; the program you drop on decides whether it copies or moves.
• Into rCommander: files dropped from the Explorer onto a panel are copied into its folder, moved with Shift, through the background queue with progress and conflict questions.
• Ctrl+C / Ctrl+X put the selected files on the clipboard as the Explorer does; Ctrl+V pastes files copied or cut in the Explorer into the active panel.
• Files on a server or in an archive are downloaded to a temporary folder first (a question above 256 MiB) and then leave as local files; the other panel must show a local folder for that. Ctrl+X does not work for them. The temporary copies are deleted when rCommander closes.
• Dropped or pasted paths that are not plain full paths (with . or .. parts, devices, streams) are refused.

Command line

The command line under the panels shows the active panel's folder as its prompt. Letters you type over a panel go into it, as in Total Commander.

• Enter runs the line in the active panel's folder. cd <folder>, cd .., cd.., chdir, cd /d <path> and a drive such as d: move the panel without starting anything (d: opens the other panel's folder when that panel is on D:, see Drive bar). Any other line opens a console window (on Windows through cmd); Shift+Enter keeps that window open afterwards. Esc clears the line.
• Ctrl+Enter adds the name under the cursor, Ctrl+Shift+Enter its full path, Ctrl+P the panel's folder - each in quotes when it needs them.
• History: the last 30 lines are kept across restarts. Up and Down walk them while the line has the keyboard (after a click into it, or typing); Alt+F8 lists them.
• The command line works in local folders; in an archive it is switched off and says so. On a server panel Enter opens Run a command on with the line, to run it on the server (see Connections); cd still moves the panel.

Quick search and filter

• Quick search: Ctrl+Alt with letters (AltGr on a German keyboard works as well, for letters AltGr types nothing for) jumps to the first name that starts with them; Down and Up go to the next and previous match, Esc or any other key ends the search. * and ? work as wildcards. Settings, page Folders, Quick search starts with can make it Alt with letters, or letters alone (then the command line takes text only after a click into it); two more switches match anywhere in a name and tell upper from lower case. With Quick search hides what does not match on, the quick search shows only the files and folders it finds, as the filter below does: Enter keeps that, Escape shows everything again.
• Filter: Ctrl+S filters the panel as you type: only matching entries show, the filter stays after Enter and shows in the path bar (Filter: *.txt), and it goes when you leave the folder or press Esc. Entries it hides are deselected. Ctrl+Shift+S applies the last filter again.

Branch view

• Ctrl+B shows every file below the panel's folder in one flat list, each named by its path relative to the folder (sub\file.txt); folders are left out. Ctrl+Shift+B does the same for the selected folders and files only.
• The list fills in the background, follows the panel's sort order and hidden-files switch, and stops at 100,000 files.
• Copy, move, delete and open act on the real files.
• Ctrl+B again leaves the branch view into the folder of the entry under the cursor; Ctrl+R (or F2) returns to the folder the view was made from, read again; going to another folder ends it too.

The search dialog's Feed to listbox shows its hits the same way; see Tools.

File icons

Every row shows an icon before its name. On Windows these are the icons Explorer shows - per file type, and per file for programs, shortcuts and folders with their own icon. Generic file and folder symbols stand in until they are loaded, and inside archives and on other systems. Settings, page Appearance, File icons: Native, Generic or Off.

Context menu

A right click on a file, Shift+F10 or the context-menu key opens the menu for the selection - or, if the clicked entry is not selected, for that entry alone. On Windows in a local folder it is Explorer's menu, with every shell extension, Send to and Open with, and rCommander's own Copy to..., Rename and rCommander properties on top. A right click beside the rows or on .. opens the folder's menu (New, Paste). In archives, on other systems, and where Windows has no menu for a path, rCommander shows its own: Open, View, Edit, Copy to..., Move to..., Rename, Delete, Properties, New folder, Refresh.

Both menus have Copy name and Copy full path for the clicked entry or the selection, one line each. The full path is the one the panel shows: inside an archive the archive's path followed by the path inside, on a server sftp://<connection name>/<path> or ftp://<connection name>/<path>. Ctrl+Shift+C copies the full paths too.

Properties, attributes and links

Key	Action
Alt+Enter	Properties of the entry under the cursor or of the selection, with Attributes to change
Space	Select, and on a folder count its size into the size column
Alt+Shift+Enter	Count the sizes of all folders in the panel
Ctrl+L	Occupied space of the selection
Ctrl+Shift+F5	Create link
Ctrl+Z	Edit the Comment of the entry under the cursor
Ctrl+Shift+C	Copy the full paths of the selection to the clipboard, one per line

• Properties shows type and link target, size and Size on disk, Created, Modified, Accessed, the owner and mode on Linux and macOS, and the comment; several entries are summed. Count sizes counts folders.
• Attributes are changed in the same dialog, as Total Commander's Change attributes: Read-only, Hidden, System, Archive, the Unix Mode (octal) and the times (Now fills in the current time). Process subfolders applies them down the folders, to Files, Folders or both.
• Create link makes a Shortcut (.lnk), a Symbolic link, a Hard link or a Junction. Kinds the file system cannot make are greyed out; a symbolic link needs Windows' Developer Mode or administrator rights, and the dialog says so and suggests a junction.
• Folder sizes are counted in the background; Esc stops. Hard links count once.
• Comments are kept in the folder's descript.ion, the file Total Commander uses, so both see the same comments. An empty comment removes it.

All keys are listed in Keyboard shortcuts.

Server panels

An SSH server opens in a panel over SFTP, an FTP or FTPS server over FTP - from the drive bar, from the connection manager (Enter or Open in panel), from a quick connection (Ctrl+N, SSH only) or typed into the path bar (see Connections). The panel then works as on a local drive:

• The path bar reads sftp://<connection name>/<path> or ftp://<connection name>/<path>; Enter, Backspace, the .. row, sorting, quick search, the filter and the views work as locally.
• A Rights column shows each entry's Unix rights as ls -l prints them, for example drwxr-xr-x or -rw-r--r-- (on FTP when the server lists them). The Owner column, once switched on (see Views), shows user and group as the SFTP server names them.
• A very large folder shows its first entries at once: while the rest arrives the status line reads Reading the folder: … entries so far, and new entries take their place in the sort order; the cursor and your selection stay where they are. Going to another folder stops the reading. If the connection breaks meanwhile, the entries that arrived stay and the status line says why.
• Links show as links; a link to a folder can be entered.
• Copy and move (F5, F6) between this machine and a server, both ways, and between two servers (transfers). A file goes to a server under a temporary name (<name>.rcpart) and gets its own name only when it is complete, so a cancel or a lost connection never leaves half a file under that name, and a file it overwrites stays until the new one is there. A move removes a source file only after its copy has the right size on the target. Two transfers per server run at once, four in all; the rest wait in the queue (settings page Transfers). A broken connection is retried and the file continues from its .rcpart part (resume). A target with a drive or a share (D:\, \\nas\share) typed or offered in the dialog of a server panel is a place on this machine.
• New folder (F7), rename and delete work on the server through the background queue.
• Ctrl+Ö / Ctrl+; opens a terminal on an SSH server, in the panel's folder.
• The command line runs a line on an SSH server in the Run a command dialog.
• Ctrl+Shift+F closes the server connection.
• When the server fails - no rights, a lost connection, no answer in time - the panel shows the message instead of the list; the next step connects again. Names a server must not send (with /, \, a control character, a drive such as C:, or ..) are left out.

Planned

• FTP's ASCII mode.
• Thumbnails and a tree view are not planned before 1.0.