Make it yours

Customizing PaneShift

Open PaneShift › Settings (⌘,) or click the gear in the toolbar. Changes apply at once, except the language, which applies after a restart.

Colors§

Total Commander's “Color by file type”. Each rule has:

Mask: names it applies to, such as *.zip;*.7z. Empty means all names.
Applies to: Files and folders, Files, or Folders.
Older than and Newer than (days): only items modified in that range, for example to show this week's files in green.
Color.

Names are colored by the first rule that matches; use Move Up and Move Down to order them. Marked items stay red whatever the rules say. The standard rules color archives orange, images purple, audio and video pink, and source code teal. Restore Defaults brings them back.

Columns§

A column set chooses which columns the Full view shows. The tab shows which set each panel uses right now and why: chosen by hand, a folder mask matches, or the default.

Select a set to edit its Name, its columns and Use for folders.
Columns (drag to reorder): drag to change the order, use Add Column and the remove buttons to change which columns appear. Name is always first.
Use for folders: masks for full folder paths, separated by ;. */Pictures* matches your Pictures folder and everything in it. Add Current Folder adds the active panel's folder and its subfolders.
Drag sets to order them. The first set whose mask matches wins; the first set in the list is used where none matches.

View › Columns… (⌥⌘K) picks a set for the active panel by hand.

Appearance§

Theme: the colors of the file lists. System follows the Mac's light and dark appearance. Classic has Total Commander's white list with a dark blue cursor, Classic Blue the blue screen of Norton Commander; there are also Solarized Light, Solarized Dark and Graphite. Each preset shows its background, stripe, text, cursor, cursor text and marked colors; change any of them and it becomes your Custom theme. Colors by file type (above) still apply.
Font: any installed font family for the lists, or the system font.
Font size of the file lists.
Monospaced names: the Name column in a fixed-width font, so names with numbers line up.
Row spacing: from dense to airy.
Striped rows.
Colorful toolbar icons: the command buttons in the toolbar in their own colors. Off by default, so the toolbar is monochrome like the rest of macOS.

With the System theme, PaneShift follows the system's light and dark appearance. The other themes keep their colors in both.

Keys§

Every command is listed with its keys. Type in Filter commands to find one, then edit its keys in the Keys column and click Apply.

Write keys as text: cmd+shift+f, opt+f7, ctrl+tab, f5, space, return.
Modifiers are cmd, opt (or alt), ctrl and shift. Special keys: tab, return, backspace, delete, space, escape, up, down, left, right, home, end, pageup, pagedown, insert, f1…f12.
Separate several keys for one command with commas.
Keys work on any keyboard layout: * means the key that types an asterisk.

Shortcuts with ⌘ and F-keys also appear in the menus. Total Commander Defaults restores the standard keymap.

Button Bar§

The colored icons in the middle of the window's toolbar. Each button has a Title, an Icon and either a command or a shell command.

Icon: click it to pick from a grid of symbols, or search by name.
Command: any PaneShift command, such as Find Files or Synchronize Folders.
Shell command: a user command, run in the active panel's folder with its output in the Command Output window (Direct edition).

Move Left and Move Right order the buttons. Restore Defaults brings back the standard bar: Terminal, Find, Sort, Compare, Sync, Pack, Server, Disk usage and Settings.

User commands§

Shell commands accept Total Commander's parameters. Every value is quoted, so names with spaces, quotes or $ can never turn into shell syntax, also when you put a parameter in quotes yourself (open "%F"). Names starting with - get ./ in front, so a program never reads them as options.

Parameter	Becomes
`%P`	The active panel's folder
`%T`	The other panel's folder
`%N`	The name under the cursor
`%F`	The full path of the item under the cursor
`%S`	The marked names, each quoted, or the cursor name when nothing is marked
`%%`	A percent sign

Examples:

du -sh %S                       # sizes of the marked items
open -a TextEdit %S             # open them in TextEdit
rsync -av %S %T                 # copy them to the other panel with rsync
ffmpeg -i %N -vn %N.m4a         # extract the audio of a video

User commands run with a POSIX shell in local folders only.

Access§

In the Direct edition: a shortcut to Full Disk Access in System Settings. In the App Store edition: the folders you granted, with Grant Access to Folder… and Remove. See Disk access.

Language§

PaneShift speaks English, Czech, Slovak, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian and Romanian. Terms follow Total Commander's translations where a feature comes from it, and Apple's words for Mac concepts.

Choose App language: Same as the system, or one of the languages, then click Restart Now.

Your own translations§

In the Direct edition you can translate PaneShift into another language, or adjust a built-in one:

Click Export Template… and save the file. It is a JSON file with every text of the app.
Open it in a text editor. Set "language" (for example "sk") and "name" at the top, then fill in the texts under "strings". Texts you leave empty fall back to the built-in language. Keep everything that starts with % as it is.
Click Import Translation…. PaneShift reports how many texts it took. Texts whose % codes differ from the original are left out and listed.
Choose your translation under App language and restart.

Show Folder opens ~/Library/Application Support/PaneShift/Translations; Remove deletes an imported translation.

View › Menu in Window puts the menu bar into the window, above the panels, as in Total Commander. It is off by default. It holds the same menus as the Mac's menu bar, which stays as it is.

Command palette§

⇧⌘P lists every command by name with its keys. Type a few letters (fuzzy matching: “syfo” finds Synchronize Folders) and press Return to run it. It is the quickest way to find a command whose key you forgot.

Scripts§

Scripts are small JavaScript files that read the panels and ask PaneShift to mark files, change folder or copy text. Run them from Commands › Run Script… (⌥⌘J). The menu lists the scripts in ~/Library/Application Support/PaneShift/Scripts and has Open Scripts Folder. PaneShift puts an example there the first time.

A script defines function run(ps). A first line // title: … sets its name in the menu.

// title: Mark Files Also in the Other Panel
function run(ps) {
    const other = new Set(ps.otherItems);
    ps.mark(ps.items.filter(name => other.has(name)));
}

Name	What it is
`ps.folder`	Path of the active panel's folder
`ps.otherFolder`	Path of the other panel's folder
`ps.cursor`	Name under the cursor, or `null`
`ps.selection`	Marked names, or the cursor name when nothing is marked
`ps.items`	All names in the active panel
`ps.otherItems`	All names in the other panel
`ps.mark(names)`	Mark exactly these names
`ps.navigate(path)`	Go to a folder
`ps.copy(text)`	Put text on the clipboard
`ps.log(text)`	Show a message when the script ends
`ps.readText(name)`	Text of a file: a name in the active folder, or a full path inside either panel's folder. Up to 4 MB; `null` otherwise

Scripts can't write or delete files or run programs, so a script from someone else can't damage anything. A script gets 5 seconds; one that takes longer is stopped and changes nothing. If a script fails, none of its requests are applied.