DCommander Basics
Navigation
Navigating your Mac using DCommander is easy. You can use the keyboard or the mouse cursor to select the folder you want to navigate to. This article assumes you have a basic knowledge of how files and folders work on a Mac.
Concept
To use the dual-panel design of DCommander effectively, you'll need to see the active file list as the source and the inactive file list as the target destination. This means that selecting a file in the source file list and performing a Copy operation, will result in the file being copied to the target file list's path.
To change the active file list, either click on the inactive file list to activate it or press ⇥ Tab on your keyboard. You will always have one active file list and one inactive file list in DCommander.
Folders, Containers and Archives
You can navigate to a selected folder by double-clicking on it, or by pressing ⏎ Return on your keyboard, or by pressing Right Arrow on your keyboard (if Lynx-like navigation is enabled).
Each file list will show a '..' item at the top, which allows you to navigate to the parent folder. You can also press the Left Arrow on your keyboard (if Lynx-like navigation is enabled).
In addition to folders and drives, you can also navigate inside special files called containers. They will behave like normal folders, allowing you to copy, move, delete or create new files and folders inside them. A common example are .app container files.
Another special file type you can navigate inside is a zip archive. You can also View file contents inside the zip archive directly. To modify the contents of a zip archive you'll need to unpack it then compress it again after the changes are made.
Drives
Drives represent different storage media on your Mac, on your network or on the internet. The internal storage drive on your Mac is represented by one or more local drives (typically one called Macintosh HD). Storage media you connect via USB, Thunderbolt, etc are called external drives. Network and internet drive connections with SMB, AFP, FTP, SFTP are called remote drives.
There are multiple ways you can navigate to a drive:
- from the Drive Bar
- from the Drive Dropdown
- from the Folder Hotlist or Favorites