PCManFM(1)

💖 PCManFM 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because we're talking about PCManFM — a.k.a. the lightweight Gtk+ based file manager for X Window, and honestly? she's iconic. the manual name is PCManFM btw, in case you were wondering who we're hyping up here. 🎀

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

pcmanfm [ options ] [ directories ]

that's it. that's the whole vibe. options and directories, go off. 💅

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

PCMan File Manager (PCManFM) is an extremely fast, lightweight, yet feature-rich file manager with tabbed browsing. and like, she's the default file manager for the lightweight desktop environment, LXDE. main character energy fr fr. 👑

here's the feature list, and no I'm not skipping a single one, because every single one ate:

• Extremely fast and lightweight
• Can be started in one second on normal machine
• Tabbed browsing (similar to Firefox)
• Drag & Drop handling with XDS (X direct save) support
• Files can be dragged between tabs
• Load large directories in reasonable time
• File association support (with default application setup)
• Basic thumbnail support with optional EXIF support
• Bookmarks support
• Handles non-UTF-8 encoded filenames correctly
• Provide icon view and detailed list view
• Standard compliant (follows FreeDesktop.org specifications)
• Clean and user-friendly interface (GTK+ 2.0)
• Full desktop management
• Can set individual wallpapers for each workspace
• Removable media mounts support
• Seamless access to remote file systems such as sftp, smb, and ftp
• Trash can support

like. the range?? 🦋

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

🌈 Global options:

• -d, --daemon-mode — run PCManFM as a daemon (this one gets ignored if another PCManFM is already running, so don't come for her)
• -p profile, --profile=profile — load another configuration profile instead of "default". yes bestie, you can have multiple profiles, live your truth 💜
• --no-desktop — for Nautilus compatibility

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💅 Per-instance options:

• --desktop — launch desktop manager (heads up: this one ignores -d)
• --desktop-off — turn off desktop manager if it's running
• --desktop-pref — open desktop preference dialog
• --one-screen — manage desktop only on current X screen (only if --desktop is used)
• -n, --new-win — open directories in new window
• --role — set X role for window (only if -n is used)
• --wallpaper-mode=mode — Set mode of desktop wallpaper, mode is:
  • color (fill with solid color),
  • stretch (stretch to fill entire monitor),
  • fit (stretch to fit monitor size),
  • center (place on center of monitor),
  • tile (tile to fill entire monitor),
  • crop (stretch and crop to fill monitor), or
  • screen (stretch to fill entire screen)
• -w file, --set-wallpaper=file — set desktop wallpaper from image file
• --show-pref n — open preferences dialog on page n
• -f, --find-files — open a file search dialog window
• directories — directories to open

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🖥️ DESKTOP MANAGEMENT 🖥️

The PCMan File Manager can manage your desktop. That includes drawing some background on it and showing icons of Desktop folder. To activate the desktop management the pcmanfm should be executed with option --desktop. Other option that affects this mode is --one-screen. Change running desktop manager parameters you can by executing pcmanfm with option --desktop-pref which opens window with preferences or using command line parameters for options --set-wallpaper or --wallpaper-mode. Execution pcmanfm --desktop-off terminates desktop management.

While pcmanfm manages desktop it displays icons on desktop. Behavior of icons resembles folder view in main window of pcmanfm but icons on desktop can "remember" their position. If you have two or more monitors then desktop background and set of icons will be shown on each of them. Icons positions will be remembered individually for each of monitors.

like ok the icon memory thing is lowkey so good, she remembers where you put things per-monitor, no cap. 🌟

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🌱 ENVIRONMENT 🌱

• XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP The current desktop environment. This variable affects items which will be shown in menu://applications/ folder.
• XDG_MENU_PREFIX The prefix for XDG menu definition XML file. This variable affects layout of items shown in menu://applications/ folder.

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🎀 FILES 🎀

• ~/.config/pcmanfm/default The default configuration profile directory
• ~/.config/pcmanfm/default/pcmanfm.conf The main configuration file
• ~/.config/pcmanfm/default/desktop-items-0.conf The desktop items layout for screen 0 (primary screen)

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

PCManFM is named after its author's nickname on the internet, PCMan. It was written by Hong Jen Yee <pcman.tw@gmail.com>.

This manual page was written by Tetralet <tetralet@debian.or.tw> for the Debian GNU/Linux system. Updated by Andriy Grytsenko <andrej@rep.kiev.ua>

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ok that's the whole page bestie, go forth and manage your files 💖✨

this has been pcmanfm 1.4.0, from April 2018 — mwah, periodt. 🫶