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Views, columns, thumbnails and the folder tree

Configurable columns or a thumbnail grid per panel, a flat view of a whole subtree, a sidebar with drives, WSL, servers and a folder tree, and Ctrl+F filtering.

Default shortcut: Ctrl+B · Ctrl+Shift+E · Ctrl+F · Ctrl+H · Alt+Shift+Enter Updated 15 August 2026 View as Markdown

A cwdio panel is a detail list by default: name, size, date and type in columns you can change, resize and reorder, with Explorer’s own icons and real image thumbnails. The same rows can be shown as a grid of tiles, flattened into a whole-subtree list, filtered as you type, or navigated from a folder tree that also lists your drives, WSL distributions and saved servers.

What it does

  • Configurable, resizable columns. Name, extension, size, modified, created, type and attributes, toggled and ordered per panel (View ▸ Columns…). Drag a header edge to resize, double-click to reset, drag a header to reorder, right-click the header row to toggle a column. Sort by any sortable column; Folders first is on by default and can be turned off.
  • Grid (tile) view. View ▸ Grid (tile) view swaps the list for tiles in three sizes; Ctrl+= and Ctrl+- step the size. Tiles show a real thumbnail, oversampled so a large tile stays sharp, plus a size · date subtitle. Left-drag on empty space rubber-band-selects; hold Ctrl to add to the selection.
  • Real icons and thumbnails. Files and folders show the icon Explorer shows — Word, PDF, zip, and the distinctive Downloads/Pictures/drive icons — and local raster images show a thumbnail. Thumbnails are fetched only for visible rows, at most four at a time, paused while a folder is loading, and throttled to one at a time on a slow network drive, so they never fight your navigation.
  • Flat (branch) view. Ctrl+B lists everything under the current folder as one flat list with a faint folder trail per row. Sort by size or date to find the biggest or newest file anywhere beneath.
  • Locations and the folder tree. Ctrl+Shift+E opens the Locations panel: Quick access folders, drives (local, removable, network, optical and each installed WSL 2 distribution), saved SFTP/FTP servers with one-click reconnect, favourites and recents, over a drive-rooted folder tree that follows the active panel and expands lazily.
  • Quick filter. Ctrl+F opens a filter bar on the focused panel and narrows it as you type, with regex and match-case toggles; Esc clears it. It is per panel — the other side is untouched.
  • Folder sizes on demand. Alt+Shift+Enter fills in recursive totals for every folder in the panel; under a size sort with Folders first on, the folders reflow biggest-first as each total lands.
  • Hidden files, Explorer’s way. Ctrl+H shows hidden entries; protected operating-system files need a second, separate preference — the same two tiers Explorer uses.

How to use it

  1. Right-click the column header row and tick the columns you want; drag them into the order you read them in. Do it once per panel — it is remembered.
  2. For a folder of photos, switch to grid view and press Ctrl+= until the tiles are large enough to recognise faces. Drag a band across the ones you want.
  3. To find what is large under a project, press Ctrl+B and click the Size header. To see the folder totals in the ordinary list instead, press Alt+Shift+Enter.
  4. Type a few letters with Ctrl+F to narrow a long folder to the rows that match; press Esc to see everything again.

Drives, WSL and the folder tree

Drive discovery never blocks the panels: cwdio shows the drives it already knows and enumerates the full set out of process, so a sleeping network drive cannot stall a listing. Removable drives appear and disappear live. Installed WSL 2 distributions are listed as roots (\\wsl.localhost\<distro>\) and browse, search and transfer like any other folder; recursive walks inside a distribution run natively in the distro rather than through the slow 9P share. The folder tree in the Locations panel lists children on first expand, auto-reveals the active panel’s folder, and is fully keyboard-navigable (arrows, Home, End, Enter); right-click a node for Open in other panel, Copy here, Move here, New folder and Add to favourites.

What it deliberately does not do

  • Icons for remote (sftp://) and in-archive rows come from a generic glyph — there is no local path for the shell to render, and cwdio does not stage bytes to get one.
  • Thumbnails are for local raster images only. Video frames, PDF pages and folder collages are not generated.
  • Flat view is not persisted: every launch starts with the ordinary shallow listing, so a slow recursive walk never starts by itself.

Questions

Which columns can the list show?

Name is always first; the others are extension, size, modified, created, type and attributes (the read-only/hidden R/H markers). View ▸ Columns… toggles and reorders them per panel, every header except Name has a drag handle to resize (double-click resets), headers drag to reorder, and right-clicking the header row toggles a column in one click.

What is flat (branch) view?

Ctrl+B flattens the whole subtree under the current folder into one list, each row showing its relative path — Total Commander's branch view. Every row is a real file, so you can sort by size to find the biggest file anywhere below, then copy, move, delete or open it in place. It is a per-panel, per-session mode; a restart starts shallow again.

Are the thumbnails real, and can I turn them off?

Yes and yes. Local PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, WebP and ICO files show a real thumbnail in the list and larger ones in grid view; everything else shows Explorer's own icon for that file type or folder. View ▸ Image thumbnails switches thumbnails off entirely, which is the right choice for a synced cloud folder where reading each photo would cost a download.

How does hidden-file handling compare with Explorer?

It matches Explorer exactly, in two tiers: Ctrl+H shows files with the HIDDEN attribute; a second preference, Show protected operating-system files, is needed for HIDDEN+SYSTEM entries. On Windows a dotfile such as .gitignore is not hidden — Explorer shows it and so does cwdio — while .git, which Git marks HIDDEN, stays out of the way.