File Operation Progress Annoyance

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JmaCWQ
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File Operation Progress Annoyance

#1 Post by JmaCWQ »

G'day All,

Does anyone know of a GUI file manager that allows for minimising the Operation Progress box while something is being copied to allow working in the file manager without this box constantly popping back up & stealing focus all the time?
I find this particularly annoying while copy operations are going on and trying to do other work in folders.
In the past it used to have a minimise button to minimise it to the Panel where it would stay until either the operation finished and it closed, or was un-minimised by the user.
This button was removed a while ago with an upgrade of Xfce, from 4.10 to 4.12 I think.
Minimising it to the Notification Area either by the icon or close button gets it out of the way but it doesn't stay there, keeps popping back up while trying to do things.
For example have something copying, the progress dialog minimised then create a new folder, soon as the folder's created it pops back up again, or delete something it pops back up again etc. etc..
It's a shame it was changed to this behaviour as it makes working with files & folders in Thunar slower and more difficult than it needs/used to be.

So far SpaceFM is the only one I've found that this isn't an issue with as it puts the progress info at the bottom of the main window not in a popup box.
As well as Thunar and SpaceFM, I've tried PCManFM, Xfe and Polo with no success.

:toast:

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Jerry3904
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Re: File Operation Progress Annoyance

#2 Post by Jerry3904 »

I'm not clear on the problem here. If you click on the Thunar window itself, doesn't the operations progress box get covered by the Thunar window? It does for me, and that's what I normally do when I want to continue working in Thunar. Maybe I have different settings in Window Manager > Focus tab.
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mxer
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Re: File Operation Progress Annoyance

#3 Post by mxer »

I sometimes leave a 'copy' session running, & start a new session of my file manager, when I want to do other things whilst the copy is ongoing, could you not work that way.

Often, I'll open two copies, & use drag & drop between them, etc.
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dreamer
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Re: File Operation Progress Annoyance

#4 Post by dreamer »

JmaCWQ wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2019 5:52 am This button was removed a while ago with an upgrade of Xfce, from 4.10 to 4.12 I think.
Minimising it to the Notification Area either by the icon or close button gets it out of the way but it doesn't stay there, keeps popping back up while trying to do things.
For example have something copying, the progress dialog minimised then create a new folder, soon as the folder's created it pops back up again, or delete something it pops back up again etc. etc..
It's a shame it was changed to this behaviour as it makes working with files & folders in Thunar slower and more difficult than it needs/used to be.

So far SpaceFM is the only one I've found that this isn't an issue with as it puts the progress info at the bottom of the main window not in a popup box.
As well as Thunar and SpaceFM, I've tried PCManFM, Xfe and Polo with no success.

:toast:
It was changed with an update to Thunar in Xfce 4.12. It beats me why they make changes like this. More newb friendly? If you install MX-17 or MX-17.1 you'll get the old Thunar. It's possible the Debian Stretch version of Thunar is unaffected. I noticed it, shook my head, but it hasn't really affected me. I usually let copy jobs run uninterrupted.
Jerry3904 wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2019 9:32 am I'm not clear on the problem here. If you click on the Thunar window itself, doesn't the operations progress box get covered by the Thunar window? It does for me, and that's what I normally do when I want to continue working in Thunar. Maybe I have different settings in Window Manager > Focus tab.
Maybe the problem was that the copy dialog steals focus from time to time. Maybe the best option is to open a completely new Thunar window.

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JmaCWQ
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Re: File Operation Progress Annoyance

#5 Post by JmaCWQ »

Thanks for the replies people.

Jerry, no, clicking brings the window back into focus but the box remains in front, while the windows behind it can be used ok, every time a change is made the box steals the focus again.
I'm using I think the default settings in the focus tab and will have a look at them later when I start copying again.
I've never changed them to my knowledge though perhaps I have if you guys are seeing different behaviour :confused:

Mxer, tried that, same result, in the new session the box takes focus again when a change is made, tried using tabs instead of windows, same deal.
EDIT: I guess I could do the copy in one file manager then work with another one, though not sure if they'd play nice together changing things in the same folders.

Dreamer, not sure I'd call it newb friendly as it makes things more difficult I believe, I guess there was some reason for the change though I have no idea what it would be, from memory I think MX-17 & 17.1 were the same as now, I think 16 had the older Thunar.
Last Debian I used was Jessie & I think it was still the older version.

If it's minimised, pasting or creating a new folder or deleting something triggers it to come up in front again, probably correct behaviour I guess for pasting and deleting as the box appears on large delete operations as well, though it'd be much nicer in my opinion if it'd stay where it's put like it used to :sad:

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Jerry3904
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Re: File Operation Progress Annoyance

#6 Post by Jerry3904 »

Hmmm. Here are my two focus settings if you want to compare.
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dreamer
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Re: File Operation Progress Annoyance

#7 Post by dreamer »

I have a clear memory that copy operations had a minimize button. Now I have searched Synaptic and I have never updated Thunar. In fact I had pinned it. This beats me. At some point Thunar copy operations had a minimize button, But when, where? I'm lost.

I would say Thunar is OK, but I tried to copy 4 GiB and I did run into trouble getting the copy window out of the way. I was running live so maybe the system was just overloaded.

There are other applications like this. Synaptic for example. "Modal windows" I think it's called. It's not possible to minimize Synaptic History window. I read that Gnome Tweak Tool has recently introduced the possibility to disable "modal windows" (for Gnome users).

I call it a newbie feature to prevent newbies from getting lost among too many windows. But I agree with OP that it makes things harder.

A piece of feed-back: I know that MX Updater tracks apt history from terminal, Synaptic and MX Updater. That's a really nice feature. Synaptic has one advantage though. I have history from January 2018 in there, while MX Updater only shows those three packages I uninstalled since latest snapshot.

Maybe this isn't the fault of MX Updater. It's just that the file is marked for exclusion by MX Snapshot. Well, that's something to investigate another day...

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JmaCWQ
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Re: File Operation Progress Annoyance

#8 Post by JmaCWQ »

Jerry3904 wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2019 4:26 pm Hmmm. Here are my two focus settings if you want to compare.
Thanks for that Jerry, tried the same settings as you and it still does it, even after logging out and back in again.
When I click the window (with your settings enabled) the progress box loses focus but still stays in front where it's visible.
If I turn on focus stealing prevention & then create a folder or delete something it keeps the window in focus so I can still use keyboard shortcuts without having to click anything, which is better than it was, but it still brings the progress box up from being minimised.
I've tried different combinations of focus settings in Window Manager & Window Manager Tweaks, also tried turning compositor off and it still seems to behave the same way, at least on my setup anyway.

I have a 'delete immediately' custom action that uses rm -fr %F and if I use that the progress box does not come up as it does when using the delete + confirmation dialog.
Since installing MX-17 my update script uses 'dist-upgrade' & it's gone from 17.0 to 18.2 without a fresh install.
Later when I've finished what I'm doing I might try backing up then deleting the ~/.config/xfce4 folder so everything's reset back to default & see what happens.

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JayM
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Re: File Operation Progress Annoyance

#9 Post by JayM »

Perhaps use a different app for the copying process such as grsync? Grsync's just a GTK GUI for rsync, and rsync would probably be faster at copying a lot of files than Thunar anyway.
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JmaCWQ
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Re: File Operation Progress Annoyance

#10 Post by JmaCWQ »

Thanks JayM, I'll give that a try.
Did you mention that here somewhere recently?

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