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# Dolphin

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Related articles

- File manager functionality
- KDE
- udisks

Dolphin is the default file manager of KDE. For the video game console emulator, see Dolphin emulator.

## Installation

Install the dolphin package.

### Extensions

- ark: adds archiving and compression support
- audiocd-kio: adds audio CD support
- baloo: extends tagging support (see #File tagging)
- dolphin-plugins: adds Git, Bazaar, Mercurial and Dropbox support and some mounting actions
- kio-admin: allows managing files as administrator
- kio-gdrive: adds Google Drive support (see #KIO slaves)
- kompare: adds the Compare files dialog (Alternatively, select two files: {right click} > Open With > {your diff tool}.)
- konsole: integrated terminal panel

Note Some extensions need to be enabled in either Settings > Configure Dolphin... > Context Menu or Menu Icon > Configure > Configure Dolphin... > Context Menu.

### File previews

- ffmpegthumbs: video files (based on ffmpeg)
- icoutils : *.ico, *.cur files and embedded *.exe icons
- kde-thumbnailer-apkAUR: android package files
- kdegraphics-thumbnailers: image files, PDFs and Blender *.blend files
- kdesdk-thumbnailers: plugins for the thumbnailing system
- kimageformats: Gimp *.xcf files, *.heic files (with libheif)
- libappimage : embedded *.AppImage icons
- qt6-imageformats: *.webp, *.tiff, *.tga, *.jp2 files
- raw-thumbnailerAUR: *.raw files
- resvg: fast and accurate SVG image thumbnails
- taglib : audio files

Note

- Previews for specific file-types must be enabled in Menu Icon > Configure > Configure Dolphin... > Interface > Previews.
- Previews may not work in fuse-based filesystems, such as iOS. A workaround is to copy files to a normal filesystem, then preview at that location.
- To enable resvg instead of the built-in SVG thumbnailer, turn off SVG Images.

## Configuration

### Single click to open folders/files

To configure Single-Click to open items, install and run KDE’s systemsettings and select the desired behavior under Quick Settings > Clicking files or folders. Then run the following to respect the setting: `XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=KDE dolphin`. (see [1])

Alternatively, install and run qt6ct from the terminal, which will then give you the option to enable Single-Click (and change the theme etc.) from the Interface tab.

If you use Kvantum theme engine - use kvantum manager > Configure Active Theme > Miscellaneous > Click behavior.

### Change the default terminal emulator

Dolphin and other KDE applications use konsole by default. To change the default terminal emulator, run `kcmshell6 componentchooser` and select your Terminal Emulator or write the launch command into the selection field in the Other... popup. (The second option will create a new local desktop entry for this command.)

For example, to launch tmux in alacritty inside Dolphin, type `alacritty -e tmux` after selecting `Other...`.

The setting can also be directly changed by modifying the configuration file `~/.config/kdeglobals`. For example, to use alacritty add in the `[General]` section:

    TerminalApplication=alacritty
    TerminalService=Alacritty.desktop

Where `TerminalApplication` takes a command and `TerminalService` a desktop entry (TerminalService seems to be optional). Note, that this does not influence the terminal within the dolphin window (opened with `F4`).

The factual accuracy of this article or section is disputed.

Reason: This does (only) work in KDE and might not be dolphin related and might not work in many other WMs. (Discuss in Talk:Dolphin)

To change the internal Dolphin terminal window go to Keyboard > Shortcuts and choose your preferred terminal and set the Launch shortcut to `Ctrl+Alt+T`, overriding Konsole's shortcut. Note that terminals opened this way might not follow the background color as specified in the terminal's configuration file, but otherwise should be identical to an instance launched in a window.

### KIO slaves

Dolphin uses KIO slaves for network access, trash and other functionality, unlike GTK file managers which use GVFS. Available protocols are shown in the location bar (editable mode) [2]. To quickly bookmark them, right-click in the workspace, and select "Add to Places".

You can install KIO slaves manually. For example, to browse your Google Drive in Dolphin, install kio-gdrive.

## Tips and tricks

### File tagging

Dolphin provides extensive support for file tagging. Add tags to a file by right-clicking the file and selecting Assign Tags. Tags on a file can be viewed in the Properties menu or in the Information panel. To show tags in a column in the Details View Mode, right-click on any header and choose Tags from the menu.

Dolphin uses the `user.xdg.tags` extended attribute to store tags directly along with each file. Baloo indexes these tags into its own database to allow for faster searching and maintains a list of all known tags.
Activate Baloo to show a list of all indexed tags within the Places panel and make searching for files by their tags possible.

### Hiding custom files/directories

Files/directories can be hidden by creating a `.hidden` file (in the same directory) that contains the names of the files/directories that should be hidden (one per line).

### Creating custom service menus

Custom service menu entries can be added to dolphin with special `*.desktop` files in one of the following Paths (see [3]):

- `~/.local/share/kio/servicemenus/`
- `/usr/share/kio/servicemenus/`

Note Desktop entries must be executable to show up in dolphin!

    gamemode.desktop

    [Desktop Entry]
    Type=Service
    MimeType=application/*;
    Actions=runWithGamemode

    [Desktop Action runWithGamemode]
    Name=Run with Gamemode
    Name[de]=Mit Gamemode ausführen
    Icon=input-gaming
    Exec=gamemoderun %u

This adds a `Run with Gamemode` menu item on all application mime types.

Tip To create a servicemenu for all file-types, use the `application/octet-stream` mimetype.

## Troubleshooting

### Device names shown as "X GiB Harddrive"

Create a filesystem label, or a partition label, and Dolphin will show this label in the device list instead of the size. See Persistent block device naming#by-label.

### Moving files into trash takes long on external drives

For moving files into the Trash, it is required that the user has exclusive access rights to the Trash. The rationale being that you do not want that others can see what you deleted. For that, a folder such as `.Trash-1000/` is created on the external drive, with permission mode `700`.

If the correct access permissions cannot be set, dolphin will (unlike GNOME) move the files to the trash in the home directory, which takes time.

To mount USB-Sticks / external HDDs, Dolphin uses Udisks. FAT32 / EXFAT / NTFS do not support UNIX file permission, udisk mounts them by default with mode 755. To configure udisks to mount these drives with mode 700, have a look at the file `/etc/udisks2/mount_options.conf.example`. Copy the file (the name should end with .conf), uncomment the relevant part and add for the three filesystems to the lines with xyz_defaults the options `fmask=177,dmask=077`.

(Background information: [4], [5])

### Transparent fonts

Fonts in selection frames may become transparent when using the GTK Qt style. Native Qt styles such as Cleanlooks and Oxygen are unaffected.

### Crashes on mounted SMB share

See Samba#Unable to overwrite files.

### Icons not showing

If icons are not displayed in Dolphin, install and run qt6ct, choose one icon theme at the Icon Theme tab, and Apply.

If icons are still not displayed in Dolphin, set the `QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME` variable to `qt6ct` in your xprofile. Alternatively, start Dolphin with the platform theme flag:

    $ dolphin --platformtheme qt6ct

Also make sure to install and inherit a fallback icon theme like hicolor or Adwaita when you are using an uncommon, incomplete icon theme.

### Icons are too big

If icons are too big on Dolphin outside of a KDE environment, start it with:

    $ XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=KDE KDE_SESSION_VERSION=6 QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=0 dolphin

### Mismatched folder view background colors

When running Dolphin under something other than Plasma, it is possible the background color in the folder view pane will not match the system Qt theme. This is because Dolphin reads the folder view's background color from the `[Colors:View]` section in `~/.config/kdeglobals`. Change the following line to the RGB value you prefer (it may be given in the form #RRGGBB or R,G,B):

    ~/.config/kdeglobals

    ...
    [Colors:View]
    BackgroundNormal=#2E2E2E
    ...

If you get a blue border around the folder view pane (if you are in split view it will only be around the focused pane), you may get rid of it by applying the `fusion-fixes.qss` style sheet via the qt6ct app. This answer describes what to do to get the adwaita dark theme working for dolphin under Gnome.

Alternatively, use kvantum to manage your Qt6 theming. For instructions on usage see the Kvantum project homepage.

### Zsh profile not loading in integrated terminal

The factual accuracy of this article or section is disputed.

Reason: This issue is not limited to just Zsh; konsole (and thus konsolepart) does not launch a login shell by default. `zprofile` should be loaded by the display manager when starting the session (like it is done by SDDM[6][7]) not by the terminal emulator. (Discuss in Talk:Dolphin)

If your zsh profile is not loading, try editing your current profile. Right-click on the integrated terminal then Edit Current Profile... and edit the launch command to `/bin/zsh --login`

### GTK applications are not using Dolphin

See Uniform look for Qt and GTK applications#Consistent file dialog under KDE Plasma.

### Unable to install any context menu plugins

When you go to Dolphin menu Settings > Configure Dolphin > Context Menu > Download New Services and try to install any service, you get this error message:

    /usr/bin/servicemenuinstaller: error while loading shared libraries: libpackagekitqt6.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

This can be solved by installing packagekit-qt6. Then restart Dolphin.

### Dolphin cannot find applications (when running under another window manager)

This can be resolved by installing the archlinux-xdg-menu package and running:

    $ XDG_MENU_PREFIX=arch- kbuildsycoca6 --noincremental

This updates the KService desktop-file system configuration cache (see kbuildsycoca6(8)), which many KDE-applications rely on for selecting desktop entries. The `--noincremental` argument is optional. `XDG_MENU_PREFIX` is needed, because archlinux-xdg-menu creates a XDG Desktop Menu with an `arch-` prefix (see xdg-menu).

The XDG Desktop Menu files can be found in `/etc/xdg/menus/*-applications.menu`.

Normally, `kbuildsycoca6` does not need to be manually installed as it is part of the kservice package, which is a dependency of dolphin.

Note This solution only rebuilds the cache and does not keep it updated. (pacman hooks offer partial automation. See here)

## See also

- Wikipedia:Dolphin (file manager)
- KDE userbase: Dolphin
- The Dolphin Handbook

Categories:

- KDE
- File managers

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- Pages or sections flagged with Template:Accuracy

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