Advertisement

How to assign a hotkey to Thunar custom actions and menu items

Thunar is a lightweight file manager app in the Linux desktop environment called XFCE. Having a minimalist look, it offers a wide range of powerful features for the user. In this article, we will see how to customize hotkeys for menu commands and custom actions in Thunar.

Advertisеment


Thunar allows the user to re-assign any hotkey to its main menu items. You just need to activate the appropriate option. Here is how it can be done.
  1. Open the Settings center of XFCE and click on the Appearance icon.xfce4-settings-appearance-icon You can also open it directly by typing the following command in your terminal or in the Application Finder:
    xfce4-appearance-settings

    xfce4-appearance-settings

  2. Go to the Settings tab and activate the option "Enable editable accelerators" as shown below:enable-editable-accelerators

Now you can assign custom hotkeys.

Assign hotkeys to default menu items

To assign a new hotkey to a default menu item, hover your mouse pointer over it but don't click it:hover-menu-item

Now, don't touch your mouse and leave the mouse pointer over the item. Press the desired hotkey you want to assign to the current menu item. Once you press it, it will be assigned. See the following screenshot:hover-menu-item-hotkey-assigned

Using this method, you can assign hotkeys to any main menu item. Only some dynamic submenus like File - New - "template list" do not support this feature, but it is a very minor limitation.

Assign hotkeys to custom actions

Custom items are useful commands, usually called from the context menu. thunar-custom-action

thunar-custom-action-context-menu

Unfortunately, the trick described above is not applicable to the context menu. However, custom actions are displayed in the main menu too, under the File menu.

thunar-custom-action-in-file-menuFrom there, you can hover your pointer over the desired custom action and assign your hotkey. It works as expected:thunar-custom-action-with-hotkey

The ability to customize hotkeys in Thunar improves the usability of this excellent file manager and saves your time. Now, you can set hotkeys for all commands you use frequently and speed up your workflow.

Support us

Winaero greatly relies on your support. You can help the site keep bringing you interesting and useful content and software by using these options:

If you like this article, please share it using the buttons below. It won't take a lot from you, but it will help us grow. Thanks for your support!

Advertisеment

Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

8 thoughts on “How to assign a hotkey to Thunar custom actions and menu items”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

css.php
Using Telegram? Subscribe to the blog channel!
Hello. Add your message here.