I've never been impressed with Thunar, but my latest discovery is a bit unnerving.

If you use Edit ... Preferences ... Shortcuts to change the keyboard shortcuts, they don't stay changed.
I removed the default assignments of "Shift+Delete", "Shift+Delete (keypad)" and "Delete" to the
file delete function, because I don't want to accidentally delete files. But next time I re-boot,
they're back to the default settings.

This is worse than not being able to change them at all. At least if you can't change them then
you know what they are going to do. Now I don't know what key combination is assigned to what.
That really matters when you are deleting stuff, especially when combined with Thunar's tendency
to show a file list in the right-hand pane that doesn't belong to the folder highlighted in the
left hand pane.

On 2/28/2024 11:34 AM, Handsome Jack wrote:
> I've never been impressed with Thunar, but my latest discovery is a bit unnerving.
>
> If you use Edit ... Preferences ... Shortcuts to change the keyboard shortcuts, they don't stay changed.
> I removed the default assignments of "Shift+Delete", "Shift+Delete (keypad)" and "Delete" to the
> file delete function, because I don't want to accidentally delete files. But next time I re-boot,
> they're back to the default settings.
>
> This is worse than not being able to change them at all. At least if you can't change them then
> you know what they are going to do. Now I don't know what key combination is assigned to what.
> That really matters when you are deleting stuff, especially when combined with Thunar's tendency
> to show a file list in the right-hand pane that doesn't belong to the folder highlighted in the
> left hand pane.
>

This will give you a rough idea of the orbit.

https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/thunar/faq#where_does_thunar_store_its_preferences

"Thunar stores the user configurable preferences (and hidden settings) in an Xfconf channel.
You can view the contents of this settings channel with the Settings Editor.

How do I assign different keyboard shortcuts?

Starting with thunar 4.18 you can make use of the shortcuts editor to assign keyboard shortcuts.
"

"If you are a packager, or a system administrator, and want to provide a system wide default for
the keyboard shortcuts, that is different from the default shortcuts in Thunar, you can create
a file Thunar/accels.scm in one of the $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS. For example, if /etc/xdg is part
of $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS (the default for most Linux distributions), you can install system wide
defaults to /etc/xdg/Thunar/accels.scm. Thunar will then load shortcuts from this file
on first startup.
"

https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/thunar/hidden-settings

Good luck :-)

Paul

Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
> On 2/28/2024 11:34 AM, Handsome Jack wrote:
>> I've never been impressed with Thunar, but my latest discovery is a bit unnerving.
>>
>> If you use Edit ... Preferences ... Shortcuts to change the keyboard shortcuts, they don't stay changed.
>> I removed the default assignments of "Shift+Delete", "Shift+Delete (keypad)" and "Delete" to the
>> file delete function, because I don't want to accidentally delete files. But next time I re-boot,
>> they're back to the default settings.
>>
>> This is worse than not being able to change them at all. At least if you can't change them then
>> you know what they are going to do. Now I don't know what key combination is assigned to what.
>> That really matters when you are deleting stuff, especially when combined with Thunar's tendency
>> to show a file list in the right-hand pane that doesn't belong to the folder highlighted in the
>> left hand pane.
>>
>
> This will give you a rough idea of the orbit.
>
> https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/thunar/faq#where_does_thunar_store_its_preferences
>
> "Thunar stores the user configurable preferences (and hidden settings) in an Xfconf channel.
> You can view the contents of this settings channel with the Settings Editor.
>
> How do I assign different keyboard shortcuts?
>
> Starting with thunar 4.18 you can make use of the shortcuts editor to assign keyboard shortcuts.
> "
>
> "If you are a packager, or a system administrator, and want to provide a system wide default for
> the keyboard shortcuts, that is different from the default shortcuts in Thunar, you can create
> a file Thunar/accels.scm in one of the $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS. For example, if /etc/xdg is part
> of $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS (the default for most Linux distributions), you can install system wide
> defaults to /etc/xdg/Thunar/accels.scm. Thunar will then load shortcuts from this file
> on first startup.
> "
>
> https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/thunar/hidden-settings
> Good luck :-)

Thanks for that. I'll have a fiddle and see what happens.

Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
> On 2/28/2024 11:34 AM, Handsome Jack wrote:
>> I've never been impressed with Thunar, but my latest discovery is a bit unnerving.
>>
>> If you use Edit ... Preferences ... Shortcuts to change the keyboard shortcuts, they don't stay changed.
>> I removed the default assignments of "Shift+Delete", "Shift+Delete (keypad)" and "Delete" to the
>> file delete function, because I don't want to accidentally delete files. But next time I re-boot,
>> they're back to the default settings.
>>
>> This is worse than not being able to change them at all. At least if you can't change them then
>> you know what they are going to do. Now I don't know what key combination is assigned to what.
>> That really matters when you are deleting stuff, especially when combined with Thunar's tendency
>> to show a file list in the right-hand pane that doesn't belong to the folder highlighted in the
>> left hand pane.
>>
>
> This will give you a rough idea of the orbit.
>
> https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/thunar/faq#where_does_thunar_store_its_preferences
>
> "Thunar stores the user configurable preferences (and hidden settings) in an Xfconf channel.
> You can view the contents of this settings channel with the Settings Editor.

I tried that. The Thunar channel in Settings Editor doesn't display any keyboard shortcuts.

> How do I assign different keyboard shortcuts?
>
> Starting with thunar 4.18 you can make use of the shortcuts editor to assign keyboard shortcuts.

I'm not clear what it means by the "shortcuts editor" here. Does it mean the thing you see when
you select "Edit...Preferences...Shortcuts" in Thunar? If so, what happens is what I described
above: you can change the assigned shortcuts and they are temporarily saved, but when you
reboot (sometimes only after a couple of reboots) they go back to the defaults.

> "If you are a packager, or a system administrator, and want to provide a system wide default for
> the keyboard shortcuts, that is different from the default shortcuts in Thunar, you can create
> a file Thunar/accels.scm in one of the $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS. For example, if /etc/xdg is part
> of $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS (the default for most Linux distributions),

I don't know what $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS means, but pressing on ...

> you can install system wide
> defaults to /etc/xdg/Thunar/accels.scm. Thunar will then load shortcuts from this file
> on first startup.

There is a file accels.scm in the directory /home/[my_username]/.config/Thunar which
changes when you use Thunar to customise the Thunar key settings. However this file
reverts to its original form when you reboot.

The above passage ("... you can install system wide defaults to ...") *appears* to mean
that, if you customise that file with your new keyboard settings, and then copy it across
to /etc/xdg/Thunar, then it will preserve its customised form from one boot to the next,
and be copied across to the version in /home/[my_username]/.config/Thunar on every reboot
and thus preserve the customisation into the new session.

However it doesn't. It's true that the version of accels.scm in /etc/xdg/Thunar remains unchanged
across boots; but the version in /home/[my_username]/.config/Thunar does not. It reverts back
to its default form on a subsequent boot and you lose the customised key settings again.

Sorry to be so boring with these details, but I can't see how to avoid it.

> https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/thunar/hidden-settings

Doesn't help. Maybe I'm doing it all wrong. But I can't help feeling that it's not my fault. If
you change Thunar's custom settings, they shouldn't revert back to default when you're not
looking. They just shouldn't.