Toolbars
4Pane has two sorts of toolbar: there is a standard one near the top, but each dir-view pane has its own small one.
The Main Toolbar
This is divided into three sections.
- On the left are normal toolbar buttons. The first three are the standard Cut Copy and Paste. Next you'll see two buttons
with curved arrows; each button has a thinner partner with a down-arrow. These are for undoing and redoing changes that you've made
to your files e.g. Moving, Deleting. The first pair of buttons undo, the second redo. More about this here.
The next two buttons are to do with tabs. The first creates a new tab, the second deletes the current one.
The last button turns on or off whether Previews of image and text files are shown.
- The middle of the toolbar is occupied by a box that displays the filepath of the current pane's selection. This has three uses:
it's a visual confirmation of what is currently selected; it's an alternative way of changing it (write in the new
filepath followed by Enter); and you can Copy its contents (Ctrl-C), then paste the filepath into a different application.
If you don't want the filepath to be displayed here, this can be changed in the Display section of Options > Configure 4Pane.
- The right of the toolbar contains two types of icon: Editors first, then Devices.
Clicking an icon opens the editor, or mounts the device. Dragging a file onto the icon opens it in the editor, or moves/copies it to the device.
Dir-view Toolbars
At the top of every dir-view pane is a small toolbar. Its first button has a tree icon on it, and is a toggle button. When it is depressed
the pane is in "Full-tree" mode: its topmost directory is always the root, '/' directory. When it isn't, its topmost directory will (probably) be a lower,
branch directory e.g. your Home directory.
I use "Branch" mode almost all the time; with an extensive filesystem it's much more manageable to focus down on the bit you're currently interested in.
It is more difficult to navigate in this mode, but the next few buttons help. The first (which is disabled in Full-tree mode) goes Up
to the next higher directory. The next ones (which you can use in Full-tree mode, but they're much less useful) navigate backwards/forwards
through the directory history. Both of these have a companion button to launch a dropdown page, like the Undo/Redo ones on the main toolbar.
So if a dir-view starts in Branch mode at /home/yourname; you double-click /home/you/foo/, then use a bookmark to go to /home/you/somewhere/else/bar/, the pane will now
have /home/you/somewhere/else/bar/ as 'root' and show its contents. One click on the Back button will take you back to /home/you/foo/, a second to /home/you/ again.
The rest of toolbar is for "GoTo" buttons. These have the same function as bookmarks, but are more convenient. Clicking one in Branch mode
changes the pane's root to the button's path; in Full-tree mode it makes that directory visible.
4Pane automatically provides a button for your Home directory, and another for ~/Documents if this exists. You can add others of your choice from Options > Configure 4Pane, in the
Display > Configure small-toolbar Tools dialog.