# Basic Functions

## Controls

### General

This is a rather short but important section that will go into the details of controlling &krusader;. This section does not try to cover all the various key combinations for two reasons:

1. there are just too many of them

2. most of &krusader; actions are configurable in the Konfigurator Panel page

We will only mention the most important keyboard shortcuts with the default configuration, but keep in mind that most of the Key-Bindings are configurable. If you find that you use a certain command a lot and want to know the shortcut for this command, or you want to change this command shortcut, then check out the Configure Shortcuts window (Settings Configure Shortcuts...).

### Moving Around

By Moving Around we mean the transfer of the keyboard and mouse focus between the different parts of the &krusader; main window. The focus can be in one of five places: the Left or Right Panel, the Menu Bar, the Command Line or the Terminal Emulator. The panel that has the focus is called the Active Panel. An Active Panel will remain active until the other panel receives the focus (&ie;: if the Left Panel was active and you clicked on the Command Line - then the Left Panel remains the Active Panel). You must deliberately change which panel is active.

The most common way to transfer the focus to a specific panel is to use the mouse to click on that panel. But you should be aware of the following:

- Clicking on the Toolbar, the FN keys bar or the Status Bar does not change the focus.

- Pushing the Run in Terminal Mode button in the Command Line will not transfer the focus, so you have to click inside the Input Line.

- When you choose a menu, the Menu Bar will become focused. It remains focused until you choose a command - the focus returns to the previous owner.

There are, of course, ways to use the keyboard to change the focus:

- The Key will switch panels, if one of the panels has the focus or rotate between all the commands in a menu, if the Menu Bar is active.

- The &Ctrl; Down Arrow will take you from the Active Panel to the Command Line or Terminal Emulator, and the &Ctrl; Up Arrow will take you back from the Command Line to the Active Panel.

- The &Esc; Key will make the Menu Bar return the focus, if it has it, to the previous Active Panel.

- If you happen to be inside the Terminal Emulator, you can use the Key, or the mouse, to navigate to an Active Panel.

- Pressing &Alt; Underlined Letter from the Menu Bar will open that menu (unless this key combination is a "Reserved Key", used by one of &krusader;'s actions).

### Selecting

&krusader; offers 4 Selection Modes, to say nothing about the Quickselect bar, only &krusader;'s Selection Mode is explained here.

Selecting is a skill you need to master in order to get the most out of &krusader;. Since the Tree Panel allows select only one directory at a time, this paragraph mainly explains how to select files in the List Panel.

Moving the cursor is easy. Left-clicking on a file or directory (referred to herein as "elements" meaning files and directories) will select it. Here are some useful pointers that will make &krusader; even easier to use (assuming you are using &krusader;'s Mouse Selection Mode):

- The Space and Insert keys will toggle the selection of the file under the cursor without affecting the selection of other files/directories, the cursor will go one position down.

- Left Clicking on a file will select, or unselect, all previously selected files.

- &Ctrl; Left Clicking will toggle the selection of the file under the cursor without affecting the selection of other files/directories.

- &Shift; Left Clicking will select all the elements between the previous cursor location and the new one.

- &Shift; Home selects everything above the cursor (and deselects everything below the cursor, if selected).

- &Shift; End selects everything below the cursor (and unselects everything above the cursor, if selected).

- The ".." entry is not selectable.

- The Edit menu can offer more ways to select your files.

### Executing Commands

There is not a lot to say here, all you need to do is select some files (if you do not, &krusader; will operate on the file(s) or directory(s) that have the focus), choose a Command from the Menu Bar or use a Keyboard Shortcut (or the Right Click Menu) and the selected Command executes. See also Executing Files.

### Quick search

This feature will do a quick search for the file name in the Active List Panel.

Type foo(one character) to do a quick search in the Active List Panel for a file beginning with "foo". A small quick search dialog box will open below the Active List Panel. Type the first few characters of the desired file name (more than one character allowed), the cursor will jump to that filename (if it exists), ⪚ type "ab" to search for a file which begins with "ab". The Up/Down Arrow will jump to the next or previous match. &Esc; will close the quick search line. The cursor will stay on the last file found. The Quicksearch supports regular expressions for searching files.

If you press &Alt; foo, the key binding shortcut will be executed. If there is no configured key binding, the remaining letter foo will be used for the quick search.

Use Configure Shortcuts window (Settings Configure Shortcuts...).

### Quick filter

This feature will do a quick filter for the file list in the Active Panel.

Press &Ctrl;I to open Quickfilter bar. Type foo (one character) to filter out from the Active Panel all the files that do not have "foo" in names. You can use wildcards for the filtering. ⪚ use "a*b" to filter files which have "a" and "b" in their names. The Quickfilter follows the case-sensitivity setting of Quicksearch.

Pressing &Enter; in Quickfilter mode sets focus to panel, when panel or Quickfilter is focused, &Esc; closes Quickfilter.

To change the default shortcut of Quickfilter use Configure Shortcuts window (Settings Configure Shortcuts...).

### Quick select

This feature will do a quick select for the file list in the Active Panel.

Press &Ctrl;&Shift;S to open Quickselect bar. Type foo (one character) to filter out from the Active Panel all the files that do not have "foo" in names. You can use wildcards for the filtering. ⪚ use "a*b" to filter files which have "a" and "b" in their names. The Quickselect follows the case-sensitivity setting of Quicksearch.

Pressing &Enter; in Quickselect mode sets focus to panel, when panel or Quickselect is focused, &Esc; closes Quickselect.

To change the default shortcut of Quickselect use Configure Shortcuts window (Settings Configure Shortcuts...).

### Context Menu

&krusader; has many Context menus that allow you to do fast operations with the mouse, usually a right-click will open the Context menu (depending on your Selection Modes settings). This list gives an overview of the most important context menus. Use them to discover the available commands.

- Main Toolbar (orientation, text position, icon size)

- List Panel on a file or directory

- Command Line (undo, paste, text completion...)

- Terminal emulator (send signal, font, history...)

- Folder tabs (new, duplicate, close)

- KruSearcher Search results file list (F3 View, F4 Edit)

- MountMan (unmount, format...)

- Synchronize Directories File List

- UserActions

- &konqueror; Right-Click actions are shown in &krusader;

- Show/hide Column Headers

- Bookmarks enable/disable permanent bookmarks

- ...

## Basic File Management

### Executing Files

You can only execute files in the Active List Panel. To execute a file just (double-)click on it or press &Enter; when it is under the list cursor. &krusader; will open it in the default application for this file type (picture, text file...) or the file will be executed (script, binary...). If you want to use another application to open the file, click with the &RMB; on the file and go to the Open with sub-menu which will offer more options. &krusader; is compatible with the &plasma; default file manager for all file types except archives that are opened inside the &krusader; panel and not in an external application. See the archives page in Konfigurator for details.

### Copying and Moving

To copy or move files/directories just select them and press F5 to copy or F6 to move them. &krusader; tries to preserve the time of modification. When copying a directory owner is changed to the user which copies the directory, group is changed to the default group of the user. When copying a file owner is changed to the user which copies the file, group is changed to default group of the user, and permissions are preserved. The owner, the group and the permissions are preserved when moving file or directory. When copying or moving files/directories a dialog appears and allows you to choose the operation destination. The default destination is the other-panel browsed directory. If you enter a partial &URL;, &krusader; will use the current panel directory as the &URL; base.

#### Copy dialog

Copy dialog

### Queue manager

The copy, move, pack and unpack operations can be queued. After selecting copy or move, hit F2 to use it. After selecting pack or unpack, hit F2 to use it. Or the direct shortcuts: copy by queue &Shift;F5 , move by queue &Shift;F6 . Queue manager performs actions one-by-one. For example, if you have a pen drive (which is slow), and you want to copy 40 files onto it, it is much better copying them one-by-one instead of starting to copy 40 files in parallel. That is why enqueuing is important. If you pack/unpack 40 files in parallel, you overload your computer, but adding them to a queue, is much more useful.

It is possible to switch the Queue Manager mode by the Settings Job Queue Mode menu item.

### Deleting - move to &plasma; Trash

Deleting files/directories is done by selecting them and pressing F8 or Delete. By default it will be moved to &plasma; Trash. You can open the &plasma; Trash with the Trash icon in the Main Toolbar or with the `trash:/` KIO slave. Physically &plasma; Trash is located in `~/.local/share/Trash/` or `Trash` in the subdirectory in user home directory which can be determined using the `qtpaths --paths GenericDataLocation` command. &Shift; Delete will delete the file permanently. A dialog will ask for your confirmation and will warn you when deleting non-empty directories. Of course only operations that are permitted to do by the Operating System will be performed - you will be notified otherwise. If you do not wish to see the confirmation dialogs, you can disable them in the Konfigurator advanced page.

### Shred Files

Shred was removed from &kde; 4 (and as consequence &krusader;-2 for &kde; 4). The main reason is probably that shredding is filesystem dependent and even if you overwrite the file 100 times, it is not sure, that it will be deleted from the disk finally. Quote from the kgpg posts: The shred feature has been removed from the KDE library. Kgpg will not support this feature anymore. Moderns file systems use journalisation. So the shred feature should be implemented in the file system. Not in kgpg. But you might use a proper shred UserAction for your filesystem. But keep in mind that if you want to be 100% sure that it is impossible that someone can read a deleted file, you need to destroy your harddrive hardware...

### Renaming Files, Creating Directories and Link Handling

Rename the file under the cursor with the F2 key or with two single mouse clicks. If only the file name needs to be renamed and not the extension, you can configure this in the Konfigurator General page. Create a new directory with the F7 key. Right-clicking on a regular file will give you the option Link Handling New Symlink. A dialog will prompt you to enter a symlink name. That symlink will point to the file/directory you right-clicked on. If the file you right-clicked on is a symlink, you will also be presented with the Link Handling Redirect Link option that will allow you to change the link target.

### Viewing and Editing files

KrViewer has a chapter of its own.

&archives;