How to Configure Dolphin file manager

The Dolphin file manager is the jewel of KDE Plasma 5. You can configure Dolphin to meet any needs of any user. In this post, I will demonstrate how I configure Dolphin for my liking. I believe learning my case will help you to configure your Dolphin.

A file manager is a very basic component of modern operating systems, providing a graphical interface to work with files and folders. So, Dolphin is the KDE file manager. It is the best Linux file manager and this is not just my opinion, is a consensus of opinion throughout the Linux community.

In fact, Dolphin is probably the most configurable file manager in Linux. There are plenty of settings one can change and it will be really difficult to cover them all in one post. However, I can show you how I configure Dolphin for my liking. Of course, you are free to deviate from these settings to configure Dolphin as you want.

Video tutorial

Configuring Dolphin file manager

This is how the Dolphin file manager looks by default.

As you can see from the picture, it looks pretty good. However, there is one unusual setting that I change right away. It is a single-click to open files and folders. For many people including me, this is a little uncomfortable way to interact with the system.

If you want to change this Dolphin behavior, open the KDE Plasma System Settings from the main menu, and in the Hardware section, click on Input Devices option.

In the left panel, you can click on the Mouse section. In the center, you will see the Double click to open files and folders option, click on it and then on the Apply button.

Now, you will be able to use traditional double-click to open files and folders. Let’s get back to configuring Dolphin file manager.

UPDATE! The Double Click option was moved to Settings -> Desktop Behavior -> Workspace in the later Plasma 5 versions.

Add shortcuts on the places section

If you work with a lot of files and folders, you need to add shortcuts to the left panel. To do so, you just need to click on the folder you want and drop it in the Places section.

Do the same with all home folders. In the end, you will have something similar to this look.

Edit the shortcut icons

Personally, I do not like the uniform icons in the Places panel because the uniform look makes navigation difficult. You can change these icons to more representative icons, to make them look better and navigation easier. Right click on the Documents shortcut, and select Edit.

In the window that will appear, click on Choose an icon.

Now you can change it to any icon you want. Since we are editing the Documents shortcuts, use the search field to search for documents. Select the icon and click on OK.

Finally, click OK to apply the changes.

After doing this process to all the shortcuts in the Places section, you will be left with something like this.

As you can see having quick access to your main home folders with explanatory icons makes it much easier to navigate through the system. Of course, this is not limited to the folders located in the home folder. You can add to Places any other folder.

Hide the home folders

You can hide some folders that you will not use in your home directory. For example, I hide the Templates folder. To hide folder, click on the folder, press F2 key to rename it, and put the dot(.) in front of its name and press Enter. This will make this folder invisible by default. If you need to see this folder again, you can go to the View menu and enable hidden files. Alternatively, you can use the Alt+. keyboard shortcut.

Configure the toolbar

The next thing I do in the process of configuring Dolphin file manager is to edit the toolbar. By default the Dolphin toolbar doe not have many instruments.

So, I add more instruments and make a few changes to configure it to my liking.

Change the toolbar icons

First, I disable the text next to icons and use only icons. To get such view, you need to right click on the toolbar, go to Text Position and select the Icons Only option.

Next, I also prefer icons in the toolbar to be little larger than they are by default, so I use the Large icon option. Again, you need to right click on the toolbar, go to Icon Size and click on the Large option.

Removing and adding elements to the toolbar

Next, I configure the toolbar elements. Right click on the toolbar and go to Configure Toolbars.

In this screen, I add and remove some elements. First, I remove the Details icon: select it and next click on the left arrow.

Many of the options on the toolbar can be activated by pressing a key. For example, I also remove the Find icon because it is possible to use the Ctrl+F shortcut to activate the search bar in Dolphin. The Split option can be activated by pressing the F3 key. I rarely use it, so I remove the Split icon too.

I also configure Dolphin by adding more tools. I add the Up button that enables jumping to a parental directory of the current directory.

I also add Reload and Hidden Files tools. Of course, you can use the Ctrl+H or Alt+. shortcuts instead of these buttons, but I am used to have them on the toolbar. The New Tab icon enables creating many tabs and navigating through the folders easily. The terminal icon is a very useful tool to open the terminal window in a current directory.

Of course, there are many more tools. When you have finished adding the ones you want, click on the Apply button. You can see my tools on the toolbar below.

You can also change the icons of these tools by selecting a tool and clicking on Change icon.

Dolphin File manager preferences

So, you can also go deeper into the settings of Dolphin. Click on the last icon of the toolbar. It is the Menu icon. Then, click on the Configure Dolphin option.

Normally, I leave the options as they are by default. However, in the Services section, I do make a few small changes. I enable copy and move commands. I have no Bluetooth so, I disable the Send file via Bluetooth option. I also disable the service related to Activity and Run in Konsole options.

On the Trash section, you can set the size limit for your trash. I keep it at defaults.

Now, on the General section, I go to the Preview tab, and I activate the images preview. I used to have the Font Files preview enabled but it was not very useful. You can enable it and maybe you will like it. If you need to preview GIMP files with extension .xcf, you need to install the package kimageformats.

In the Confirmation tab, I also usually disable Closing Dolphin with Multiple Tabs option because I rarely accidentally close them.

I usually also to the Status Bar tab and disable the zoom slider. I rarely zoom in or out in my file manager, and even if I need to do so, I use Ctrl+mouse wheel scrolling.

In the end, I get this look of the Dolphin file manager.

Conclusion

This is how I configure the Dolphin file manager. Now that you know the process of configuring Dolphin file manager it is up to you to explore all the available options.

Let me know in the comments section if there is something particular that I have not covered.