Way to turn off navigation animations in Thunar

advice1010 · 2023-02-27 21:24:08

My Linux journey continues....
I am on a theme of things doing the opposite of what they are expected to do, this one will be kind of funny.
XFCE is known to not have any animations, seen many people asking for them and they get denied and scolded.
Now I am wanting to not have animations in this case and XFCE now has them in Thunar.

I notice that Thunar has for lack of better word animations when navigating.
For example, if you go into a folder that has a file list that goes beyond the bottom of the screen and use the down arrows you will notice that the selection rectangle goes beyond the bottom and then kind of animates back up with the next file on the list.

Another example is when using page up & page down in long file lists you will see the color selection rectangle being animated from top to bottom of screen which is not desired either.

I think I know the answer to this already, but is there any chance that these can be turned off somehow?

Thank You

EDIT:
I have so far found a total of four different animations, I have mentioned them in detail below if anyone is interested.

Last edited by advice1010 (2023-09-17 22:53:05)

ToZ · 2023-02-27 22:26:02

I'm not seeing any animations in thunar outside of a scroll when you select down outside the window display. Are you able to record and link a video?

advice1010 · 2023-02-27 22:42:22

@ToZ
Thank you for your response, no I don't have the ability to do that at the moment.
Again don't know if you would call them animations / autoscrolls?
Don't have access right now to replicate but as mentioned it is based on the highlight, make sure their is a file highlighted that is visible on your screen at top or bottom and then page up or down, you will see that highlighted rectangle scrolling across the screen from top to bottom or vice versa.

There is an autoscroll that is linked to the rename which is nice, that one makes sense so it doesn't shoot the file you rename off the screen out of view, it follows it. So if you are at the top of a list and rename a file that starts with a to something that starts with z it scrolls down to z. Page up and down one may be using something similar.

Either way, do you by any chance know if their are any settings to turn the one can see, the one linked to down arrow?
Imagine they would all be in the same place.

Last edited by advice1010 (2023-02-27 22:42:50)

ToZ · 2023-02-28 00:14:53

There is no Xfce setting for this. If anything, its the GTK3 theme that is doing this, but I can't replicate this no matter which theme I try. What GTK (Appearance) theme are you using?

advice1010 · 2023-02-28 14:37:57

@ToZ
To be honest I made a request regarding what I thought was going to be a reasonable item to fix but it got shot down pretty bad, so this item that I mentioned here, at least for me is no longer something I am interested in fixing.
Spent a TON of time getting into XFCE, but having my other request denied made me realize that XFCE is unfortunately not for me at this time. Which is a shame, I was actually really excited about the project, I had so many ideas to share regarding XFCE and Thunar, but as mentioned, if my first request didn't get accepted then probably none of them would.

Rather than just leaving, I just thought that it would be important to say thank you to you one more time and let you know that I appreciate all the effort, not just for my posts but for helping others as well.

Thank You

advice1010 · 2023-09-05 21:44:13

@ToZ
Don't mean to bring this one back up, I don't think this is going to be something that has a solution for it, willl have to make a request which as mentioned I am hesistant make any requests on Xfce Gitlab page, but I probably will if you are able to reproduce.
I believe they are intentional so I doubt developer is going to have an open mind about changing this.
Again they are auto scrolls but I called them animations in title but movement in general.
They are really how the highlight cursor animate / move on screen when the auto scrolls occur.
My highlight color is a relatively darker blue which helps to see these animations.

1.) Navigation using arrow keys when cursor at top or bottom of screen.
So you mentioned that you can see this one, correct?
Instead of having the next file come up to the highlight where the highlight does not move, instead the highlight goes below screen view and then auto scrolls back up.

2.) Navigation using page up / page down
To recreate this one as well as one above, you have to have a folder with a lot of folders / files inside of it where the vertical scroll bar appears and page up / down keys work. Place your cursor highlight at the top of the list / screen and then hit page down. The highlight cursor goes beyond the bottom of screen and then you can see it auto scrolling back up. Works the same if you put your cursor highlight on the last file and hit page up, you can see the highlight going to the top of the screen but then scrolls / animates the highlight cursor to the bottom of screen with each page up.

What other FMs do is that when you hit page up / down the first time it brings the cursor to the bottom or top of screen, to the first / last file VISIBLE on your screen (does not bring cursor beyond visble file screen like Thunar does) then when you hit page up / down again you get no highlight cursor scrolling across the screen.
Thunar will work like this if you manually click on the last visible file on your screen to highlight it first and then you hit page down, then auto scrolling still occurs but the cursor does not animate across screen, but it does mimic the animation that was mentioned in 1.) where it does drop below screen and animates back up.

Hopefully all of this makes sense, if you have a chance to try this out let me know

3.) Since making this original post another one has been added, although this one could be helpful, might be nice to have option to turn off for users who don't want this. This one occurs if you have a long list of files and you perform a "cut" action, Thunar auto scrolls to top of screen, making the assumption that you want to paste into a folder at the top of your file pane.

Thanks again for all your help

Last edited by advice1010 (2023-09-05 22:21:44)

ToZ · 2023-09-05 23:41:13

Is there any chance you could post a video of these issues? It might help to try to replicate them.

Also, what Appearance (GTK) theme are you using? Does changing the theme make a difference?

JmaCWQ · 2023-09-06 11:37:22

I think I understand what you mean with regards to the navigation using the arrow keys and navigation using the page up page down keys, I see the same and have done for quite a while I believe.
It only does this in List View, and only if there's more than a single page of files or folders.
Theme doesn't seem to make any difference, I believe it's a 'Thunar' thing.

You might also notice that as you page down or up either by the buttons or clicking in the scrollbar trough that Thunar doesn't actually go the full page each time, that applies in Thunar itself and also other things like VLC media player going File > Open File and looking in a folder that has more than a single page of files to choose from.
In Thunar if I open a folder that has many files in list view, then take note of the lowest file visible in the window, then hit the page down button, the lowest file that was visible is not at the top of the page as one would expect, but it's a couple of lines down from the top of the page.
Like this, note the position of the file named 04-01-08-fly-001-compressed.jpg, the top pic is when first opened, at the top of the folder, the bottom pic is after hitting the page down key once:

I do the same thing in the same folder with XFE file manager and whatever file was at the very bottom of the window goes to the very top of the window after paging down.

Here is a video of what I believe advice101 is referring to with regards to the navigation using the arrow keys and navigation using the page down page up keys, if that's not what it is then I don't know:

https://youtu.be/ru98JjiBFjw

advice1010 · 2023-09-08 17:06:09

@ToZ
Thank you for your response

@JmaCWQ
First off, thank you so much for providing this video.
Your video also brings up a couple extra points, height & background color.
-The height / longer the list, the more this animation is visible as it travels farther across screen, so seen more on larger screens.
-Also I use a white background currently with a darker blue highlight cursor which makes this animation more visible as well. So if anyone tests this a white screen may help.

That being said in your video it can still be seen.
2.) Page Up one I believe starts at about 0:13 and Page Down one I believe starts at about 0:23

I noticed there was something off about where the page up / page downs occurs in relation to the top / bottom of lists / which file gets cursor highlight, just didn’t want to bring it up in this post because it was already a little tricky enough explaining the animation issue.
I agree with your observation, mine pages down two files above the last item visible in the file pane as well.
I plan on mentioning this one to developer also, unless you feel like / were planning on doing so?

JmaCWQ · 2023-09-09 08:19:03

Yeah you're welcome advice1010.
I had noticed it in the past and figured that was what you were referring to.

My uneducated guess on why this occurs is that when scrolling with the arrows or pagedown pageup keys, Thunar is coded to display the selection's movement immediately, and when the selection reaches the bottom of the visible file list this takes priority over the file list scrolling to the next line, so the selection scrolls off the screen, then as the list scrolls afterwards the selection slides back into view.
Whereas others like XFE file manager both occur at the same time, or that close to each other the difference isn't discernible with the naked eye, lol, note the words 'uneducated guess' big_smile

I paged up and down a couple of times and also just used the up and down arrows in the video.
I think I held the page down button for a bit at around 23/24 seconds, looking at the video again it seems I first hit pagedown at about 6 seconds, then first hit pageup at about 14 or 15 seconds?

I'm not going to mention any of it to the devs as to be perfectly honest I'm used to how it works with regards to not quite going a full screen when paged up or down (or clicking in the scrollbar trough which I often do), and the selection highlight scrolling before the file list scrolls doesn't bother me at all.

The video is not set to public and can only be viewed by whoever has the link, so you'll have to share the link with whoever you want to see it, developers or whoever, I'll leave it up for a while.
I did shrink the window quite a bit smaller than I usually have it displayed for the purposes of recording the video, I see this behaviour regardless of window size, seems the only requirements to making it repeatable are that the view is list view and there's more files or folders than can be displayed on the screen.

advice1010 · 2023-09-17 22:51:41

@JmaCWQ
Ok thank you, if you could keep up for a little while that would be great.
I am trying to put together quite a few posts with little bugs I have been finding that I plan on reporting.

4.) I have found another animation that I am not a fan of.
It does not happen all the time so I am not sure yet what is causing it, mainly notice this when using Ctrl+x or Ctrl+c to cut or copy files.
If you have your Thunar window width small and say your name columns FULL width is not visible on the screen, Thunar will animate to the right by itself so you then cannot see any of your filenames / only see the ends of the names.
Really don't like this animation.
Anyone else experience this before?

JmaCWQ · 2023-09-18 04:34:53

4.) Yes, it's repeatable on my setup, so long as the name column is not fully visible it does that, and it only does it with files highlighted, not folders.
I only use list view and rarely have the columns that small I can't see the whole name so I just ignore it.

Will leave the video up.

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#1 2023-02-27 21:24:08

Way to turn off navigation animations in Thunar

#2 2023-02-27 22:26:02

Re: Way to turn off navigation animations in Thunar

#3 2023-02-27 22:42:22

Re: Way to turn off navigation animations in Thunar

#4 2023-02-28 00:14:53

Re: Way to turn off navigation animations in Thunar

#5 2023-02-28 14:37:57

Re: Way to turn off navigation animations in Thunar

#6 2023-09-05 21:44:13

Re: Way to turn off navigation animations in Thunar

#7 2023-09-05 23:41:13

Re: Way to turn off navigation animations in Thunar

#8 2023-09-06 11:37:22

Re: Way to turn off navigation animations in Thunar

#9 2023-09-08 17:06:09

Re: Way to turn off navigation animations in Thunar

#10 2023-09-09 08:19:03

Re: Way to turn off navigation animations in Thunar

#11 2023-09-17 22:51:41

Re: Way to turn off navigation animations in Thunar

#12 2023-09-18 04:34:53

Re: Way to turn off navigation animations in Thunar

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