Thunar keyboard shortcut to change tab

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Thunar doesn't actually have a keybinding for changing to the next/previous tab, but instead the underlying GTK control, in this case GtkNotebook, has some key bindings.

GtkNotebook defines previous tab as both Ctrl+PageUp and Ctrl+Alt+PageUp (and similarly for next tab/page down); however, in Thunar's case, the Ctrl+PageUp/Ctrl+PageDown keybinding is blocked by the fact that the pane you're viewing (the icon and details view) is of type GtkScrolledWindow and has its own usage of Ctrl+PageUp/Ctrl+PageDown decribed here:
https://developer.gnome.org/pygtk/2.24/class-gtkscrolledwindow.html#signal-gtkscrolledwindow--scroll-child

The last time I installed an OS with Thunar on it, it didn't even have tabs so I immediately discarded it and used PCManFM, which although it doesn't define a next/previous tab key, doesn't use a GtkScrolledWindow for the viewing of the files and therefore the built-in Ctrl+PageUp/Ctrl+PageDown for the tab widget works.

IMO both programs (and all file managers) should define these, and use reasonable defaults, in addition to supporting move tab left/right like many browsers do (Ctrl+Shift+PageUp/Ctrl+Shift+PageDown).

For Thunar, I have a patch I made to at least define all 4 of these events as keybinds explicitly (which would make them overrideable in the way you described in your original post) that I hope to post soon in this bug report:
https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9585

Unfortunately while it does let you change the keybinds for those events, it doesn't let you override existing keybinds from child widgets (such as GtkScrolledWindow), so you'd have to use and bind something like Alt+PageUp/Alt+PageDown or equally messy. If I figure out a patch for that, I'll definitely post it to the bug, but that's proving harder to figure out.

* **Edit ***

You can move to a specific tab using Alt+N, where N is a number 0-9, but I find this to be of very limited use.

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JunkMechanic
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Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

  • JunkMechanic
    JunkMechanic over 1 year

    Currently in Thunar, to shift to the next tab, Ctrl+Alt+PageDown is to be used. I want to change it to either Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+PageDown.

    Now, ~/.config/Thunar/accels.scm is where all the shortcuts are defined in this format :

    (gtk_accel_path "<Actions>/ThunarWindow/new-tab" "<Primary>t")
    

    My question is:

    1. what is the keyword for changing tab that should replace new-tab in the above example?
    2. Ctrl -> <Primary>. So how about Tab -> ? and PageDown -> ?
  • JunkMechanic
    JunkMechanic about 10 years
    Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Any chance I can have a peak at that patch? :D
  • Thomas W.
    Thomas W. over 7 years
    There's now a bounty on Bountysource for this problem.