Folder-local options for the file manager

[jyothisv]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe

First of all, thank you very much for this awesome project! I am impressed by Yazi's speed as well as features. I currently use lf and would love to switch over.

One feature that I really like in lf is the ability to set properties only in a specific directory. For example, we can use time-based sorting for say the Downloads directory while keeping natural sorting for all other directories. I think that would be a a nice addition to Yazi.

Will you be willing to contribute this feature?

• Yes, I'll give it a shot

Describe the solution you'd like

There should be an option to specify directory-specific settings in yazi.toml. Probably we can add a list of directory, settings table under the [manager].

An example:

[[directory_local_settings]]
directory = "~/Downloads"
sort_by = "modified"
sort_reverse = true

If the directory name ends with a slash, the settings would be applied to its sub-directories as well.

A related feature would be a global option to make sorting commands always be directory-local. Usually, when I sort the files in a directory, I don't want the sorting to persist when I go to the parent directory. So this option would be quite useful to me.

Describe alternatives you've considered

No response

Additional context

No response

[sxyazi]

Sounds good to me. Maybe we can have:

[folder]
rules = [
  { name = "Downloads/", sort_by = "modified", sort_reverse = true, preload = false, ... }
]

to keep the same style as others.

[tianze0926]

With the introduction of DDS I can now achieve a basic version using the plugin system:

-- ~/.config/yazi/plugins/folder-rules.yazi/init.lua
return {
    setup = function()
        ps.sub("cd", function()
            local dir = tostring(cx.active.current.cwd)
            if string.find(dir, "Downloads") then
                ya.manager_emit("sort", { "modified", reverse = true, dir_first = true })
            else
                ya.manager_emit("sort", { "alphabetical", reverse = false, dir_first = true })
            end
        end)
    end,
}

-- ~/.config/yazi/init.lua
require("folder-rules"):setup()

But I’m uncertain about how much overhead there would be compared to when it’s implemented in Rust.

[gaesa]

I disagree with the proposed direction of adding directory-specific settings directly into the configuration file for several reasons:

1. Frequency of Changes: Directory-specific configurations, such as sorting rules, tend to change much more frequently than general configurations. Storing them in the main configuration file is semantically incorrect.

2. Convenience: The current approach requires modifying the configuration file every time a directory-specific sort order changes, which is inconvenient for users.

3. Privacy Concerns: General configurations are often tracked by version control systems like Git, while directory-specific configurations typically are not. Including directory paths in the main configuration file raises privacy issues.

Inspired by GUI file managers, a better approach is to make the currently stateless, globally-affecting sort shortcuts folder-specific and stateful. These states could be stored in a dedicated state directory, such as ~/.local/state/yazi/folders.json or even in a SQLite database.

Example folders.json:

[
  { "name": "~/Downloads/", "sort_by": "modified", "sort_reverse": true }
]

This method provides a clearer separation of concerns, enhances convenience, and protects user privacy. This is one possible improvement over the current proposal, though it might not be the only or the best solution, and further refinement could still be beneficial.

[sxyazi]

With the introduction of DDS, I think this is now well-supported. I've added it to the Tips page of the documentation, https://yazi-rs.github.io/docs/tips/#folder-rules, based on a code snippet shared by @tianze0926 - thank you for sharing it!

This approach is more flexible because you can call all Yazi-supported commands in Lua, not just sort, but also commands like hidden (to set different hidden states for different directories), linemode (to set different line modes for different directories), etc. You can also programmatically combine any conditions you want, no matter how complex they may be.

And there's no impact on performance - these commands skip unnecessary computations and use cached results. For example, if you set directory A to sort by creation time but it's already sorted by creation time, it won't re-execute, as that would be an unnecessary calculation.

[github-actions]

I'm going to lock this issue because it has been closed for 30 days. ⏳
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