Initial Options

[00:02] (external link, opens in new tab) Okay, let's start with the basic configuration that's going to happen the first time you open Total Commander. This is the Total Commander window, but the first time you open it, you're going to see the configuration options screen. I'm going to go through some of the default options that I try to have when just setting up Total Commander and some of the reasons between them. So first of all there is drive buttons which I like to show. The drive buttons are those things here.

[00:34] (external link, opens in new tab) If I press apply and I hide them you don't see them obviously but I like to have two drive buttons at each side at each pane. And the reason is there is just an easy way to get to something when you need to and there is no confusion as to where which active tab is going to get to that drive. The second thing that I do show is command line and the third is I do usually hide the function keys. So the function keys let me show them again.

[01:06] (external link, opens in new tab) These are those things over here and I find that they are very very useful for someone who's just beginning with total commander. The reason is is they show you and they tell you how you can click on them and you can they also tell you the shortcuts to use for the most common file operations like copy, move, create folder, delete, etc. And you can do all of them with just a single click or a single click of a a type of a keyboard button, keyboard click, etc. Second is the display.

[01:37] (external link, opens in new tab) I do show hidden files in system files because that's what usually you would want to do when you use something like Total Commander. You want to see what the hell it is you're doing. And I also make sure that when I sort directories, I sort them like files, not just by name. This is very important because when I work with Total Commander, notice that I always sort by date, which makes sense because usually you want to go to the folder that you went to last time or usually you want to edit the the file that was last changed or just added.

[02:10] (external link, opens in new tab) So, sorting directories also by date is a very handy way to just get back easily to the folder you were working on if you don't have a shortcut to it already set. More common things. I did set the fonts to something a bit nicer than the standard fonts which are very very ugly. I'm just using Sego or Sado or I'm not sure how to say it, the Segoe fonts. And I find it's just easier to walk through especially in the video.

[02:42] (external link, opens in new tab) Color. This is actually very nice. Total Commander allows you to mark specific types by specific colors. We're going to I'm going to show that in a different video, but for now, tab stops. For tab stops, this is basically how things are shown in the file lists. I usually show extensions directly after file name, but you might want to have it aligned with the tab. So, if I click that, I set apply. Let me just hide that for a second.

[03:12] (external link, opens in new tab) You can see file names here just far away from the file name. But if I set options again and I show them under tab stops directly after file name, it just seems simpler this way for me. This is more of a stylistic issue. Another important thing that I usually set to is mouse selection mode. If you're used to Norton Commander, you're going to have the default set to what you want.

[03:45] (external link, opens in new tab) But if you're not used to it and you're mostly a Windows person, u use left mouse button, which is what I use because then the mouse acts on the file system the way you would expect it to behave. Also selection. selection also select directories means that when I select specific types of file with num plus which you're going to see later in the video I also want to select directories based on a specific naming pattern etc. So this is going to do that. Then we have copy.

[04:17] (external link, opens in new tab) And in copy I usually turn off standard copy mode which is very slow and I use big file copy mode which is a very nice way of total commander to speed up copying because it uses bigger chunks between the files. So when you're copying large files around this is very helpful. However, if this gives you trouble, you can always go back to the default copy mode if you need to. Another thing that I usually do is I set quick search here.

[04:47] (external link, opens in new tab) Quick search allows me when I'm in the file system to look for a specific file. And when what I like to do is that I just want to be able to type something when I'm in a specific pane and I want anything that contains that string to be highlighted. So, I turn off beginning or ending. And this way when I am typing something let's say I want to look for something with the word store I just type store and you see that immediately goes to event store here or if I want to use the word mock

[05:22] (external link, opens in new tab) Then I have mock and if I move with the arrows there are only two types two directories here with mock if I look for page there's the only this file so it's very easy way to just find something when you're looking for it by just typing the name without having to have a special key just to start searching etc. There's a bunch more stuff here, but that's basically the default settings that I use with Total Commander. And now we can actually start working.