Feature request: Define Colors by file type

[designer]

Hello
Dear Sirs,
Hereby a feature request for "define colors by file type"
Similar to software "Total Commander"
Thank you.

[meteorquake]

It's an interesting idea.

I think with Everything, it could be made a bit more general so that a filter equation is assigned a colouring (rather than restricting results). For example, you might want files older than a certain age to be greyed out so the ones you are recently working on are more prominent. Equally the filter could target extensions.

David

[void]

The next alpha update will have basic support for color filters via the Everything.ini.

Thanks for the suggestion.

I'll make a post here once this is ready for testing.

[meteorquake]

Can I mention a bit more about how colouring might be useful.
It would be useful to put keywords in filenames that trigger certain styles. To illustrate the concept, if the filename had the word $GRN then Everything could be made to make its background glow green in the list or thumb view.
Such words could have been placed there by other processes. For example I currently have a VBS script I run from a folder right-click that adjusts the titles of files whenever there is a jump in timestamp of more than 15 mins (it ensures the word START is in the title), as this highlights changes of photographic sequence when they are placed in a single folder. Having those glow a colour due to some filter by detecting the word START would be very helpful.
Conceptually it's related to a different suggestion made once where you can trigger a layout marker (such as a gap, start of next line, line across, background colour) whenever a comparison of one file's attributes is made with the prior one in the list proves true. So for example if the results were sorted by path you could trigger a line across when the path changes as you go vertically down the list, but it could equally be triggered by a timestamp jump of more than 15 mins, or change of calendrical year.
David

[void]

You'll be able to control the foreground color, background color and font style (bold or normal) for each filename filter.
Dark and light themes have separate settings.

I'll keep it basic to start with.
At some stage, I feel this will need separate color settings for each state, eg: selected, inactive selected, drop-target, mouseover etc...
I will consider layout marker settings.

Thank you for the suggestions.

It will be useful to get the back end going before I start a UI.
The UI probably won't exist til Everything 1.6.

[designer]

The next alpha update will have basic support for color filters via the Everything.ini.

Thanks for the suggestion.

I'll make a post here once this is ready for testing.

Thank you for further improving your great application.

[void]

Everything 1.5.0.1331a adds basic support for creating color filters via your Everything ini.

To create a color filter:

• Copy and paste the following into your Everything search box:
  about:config
• Press ENTER in your Everything search box.
  ---this will open your %APPDATA%\Everything\Everything-1.5a.ini in Notepad---
• Please change the following lines:
  
  color_filters=
  color_filters_foreground_color=
  color_filters_dark_foreground_color=
  
  to:
  
  color_filters="*.mid;*.mp3;*.flac;*.ogg";"*.mpg;*.avi;*.mp4;*.mkv"
  color_filters_foreground_color=#c86e77;#cb454e
  color_filters_dark_foreground_color=#c86e77;#cb454e
  
  where each setting is a semicolon (;) delimited list of values.
  Leave a value empty to use the default color/font-style.
  Filters support wildcards or regex with the regex: prefix.
  The whole filename is matched.
  Use a path separator to match the full path and filename.
  Use double quotes to escape your filters which are also semicolon (;) delimited lists.
  Use \ inside double quotes to escape special characters, eg: \\ or \"
  Use #RRGGBB for the color, where RR is the hex value for red, GG is the hex value for green and BB is the hex value for blue.

• Save changes and exit Notepad.
• In Everything, accept the prompt to reload your configuration file.

[meteorquake]

Thanks for the quick work!
I found the foreground colour works but not the background colour - I had red as foreground which showed clearly but switching fore and back colours didn't give a red background.
At some stage it would be good to call these up from the search syntax so they can be used for specific tasks and in predefined filters (the search may specify several names rather than simply one) so it may be the filters would need to be given names, and I guess no name or perhaps the name "global" or "default" would mean it globally applies. Perhaps if we're looking for a name they can be called "Formatters" or maybe "Conditional Formatting" would be a familiar term for them from existing spreadsheet implementations!
David

[void]

Support for changing the background color and font-style is currently disabled. (It still needs some work)

I will consider Conditional Formatting.
Thank you for the suggestion.

[meteorquake]

I've attached my current usage method for interest, where I'm using it to highlight transitions of photographic sequences.
A VBS script marks time transitions of over 15 mins within a folder (i.e. plants photographed on different occasions) with a keyword START, and Everything highlights items with that keyword in red.
This presumes they're sorted in date order, and that's an example of where controllability of when to apply the formatter comes in.
A Transition Formatter would be the ideal for this and many other tasks, but this is a really big help just to have this colouring!
David

[void]

Everything 1.5.0.1332a makes some changes to color filters.

You can now specify a color filter type.

The type can be one of the following values:
0 = use default
1 = match folders only
2 = match files only
3 = match files and folders.

Currently, the default value of 0 will match files only.



Background color will be too tricky for Everything 1.5.
You would need to be able to specify colors for multiple states (eg: selected, drop target, inactive-selected, etc...) for this to be usable.



To set a color filter for folders only:

• Change
  color_filters=
  color_filters_foreground_color=
  color_filters_dark_foreground_color=
  color_filters_type=
  to:
  color_filters=*
  color_filters_foreground_color=#ff0000
  color_filters_dark_foreground_color=#ff0000
  color_filters_type=1
  -where #ff0000 is the color in RRGGBB hexadecimal.

[verviers]

I think with Everything, it could be made a bit more general

As for example, to define color in filter properties for files, modified after 12.01.2023. To set color for such files as Green. And they become green as soon as we switch to this filter. Looking forward to this super-feature.

[void]

I will consider conditional color filters.

Thank you for the suggestion.

[Tomanic]

Everything 1.5.0.1341a (x64) - when I define several color filters in Everything.ini (e.g. one for video formats, one for image formats) Everything removes them and only keeps the last set of settings. E.g. if I put this in the ini:

color_filters="*.AVI;*.MKV;*.MP4;*.WMV"
color_filters_type=0
color_filters_foreground_color=#ff7e40
color_filters_dark_foreground_color=#ff7e40
color_filters="*.JPG;*.PNG;*.PSD"
color_filters_type=0
color_filters_foreground_color=#00ff40
color_filters_dark_foreground_color=#00ff40

then only the second part with image formats will stay after reloading while the part concerning videos is removed. Did I misunderstood and it's possible to only use one custom color filter setting?

[NotNull]

There can only be one (1) color_filters (etc) entry. If you define multiple color_filters= entries, the previous ones will be overwritten.

Instead use ; to separate multiple settings, just like in the example @void provided:

color_filters="*.mid;*.mp3;*.flac;*.ogg";"*.mpg;*.avi;*.mp4;*.mkv"
color_filters_foreground_color=#c86e77;#cb454e
color_filters_dark_foreground_color=#c86e77;#cb454e

[Tomanic]

Thank you very much for pointing this out NotNull, Everything is clear now!

[NotNull]

You're welcome!

Everything is clear colored now!

Fixed that for you

[Tomanic]

You're welcome!

Everything is clear colored now!

Fixed that for you

[void]

Everything 1.5.0.1367a adds support for color filters to the folder sidebar.

[meteorquake]

Can I check here how complex the filters can be - is it just on the name, or could you, for example, colour videos whose size or frame rate is greater than a certain value, or ones that are younger or older than a certain date? size conditions would certainly be handy for me for colouring small versions of photos distinctively from the originals.

Also, is it possible to colourise the Folder sidebar entries without colourising the equivalent folders in the results list?

Cheers! David

[void]

Color filters only work on the full path and name at the moment (not properties)

The folder sidebar will use the same color filters.
You cannot set color filters for just the folder sidebar.

Color filters will be expanded in a future release.
For now, it's a simple ini only setting.

[nod5]

Requests for future enhancements to the the color filters feature

- In addition to color allow using any emoji symbol, shown as prefix in the first column for matching files.

- keyboard shortcuts to add/remove selected file(s) to a color filter

- search functions to list files matching a color filter. For example

color1:

color2:

...

- support temporary color filters, the contents of which expire either when the Everything window closes or when the Everything process closes (user choice).
(One use case for temporary color filters is when looking through lots of files and the goal is to select a few of them from different folders and later copy the files to a new folder. We can currently search for the first file, copy it to a target folder, search for second file, the copy it to the target folder, ... and so on. With color filters the user could instead search and (via key shortcut) label repeatedly until all desired files have the label. Then type a search function like color1: (see above) to show all labelled files. That makes it easy to select all and copy to a folder. This feature would have some similarity to shortcuts that toggle a line highlight/bookmark in many code editors.)

- popup window to view and edit current color filters

- more complex color filters. Everything has very powerful search syntax to narrow down what files are shown. In theory an equally powerful syntax could be used to determine what color a file (if shown) should have. Probably overkill though

[void]

- In addition to color allow using any emoji symbol, shown as prefix in the first column for matching files.

I will consider an option to do this.
I also want to add support for "marking" files at some stage.

- keyboard shortcuts to add/remove selected file(s) to a color filter

I will consider a color filter organizer where you can add files. (by either drag drop, right clicking the file or some UI command that can be bound to a keyboard shortcut)

- search functions to list files matching a color filter. For example

- support temporary color filters, the contents of which expire either when the Everything window closes or when the Everything process closes (user choice).

I'll consider an option to do this.

- popup window to view and edit current color filters

color_filters will be replaced with a json array of objects at some stage.
I am working on a UI to edit color filters.

- more complex color filters.

The coloring would have to be determined at the index level.
Could be done with something like assignable column properties.

I'll consider adding support for this.



Thank you for the suggestions.

[Wolfenk]

Hello. I saw that color filters are working with paths but I couldn't make it work. What I need to achieve is setting a color filter for files inside a specific folder. I would appreciate it if you could give an example of usage. Tried with values:

color_filters="C:\somefolder\"

color_filters="*\somefolder\*"

color_filters="*path:somefolder*"

None of them seem to work.

Edit: Just made it work using:

color_filters="C:\\somefolder\\*"

Problem was lack of \ escape character.

I got another question, is it possible to set filter to files inside folder recursively? I also need filters applied to all other folders inside C:\somefolder\

Edit 2: Solved this too, added two * (wildcard) instead of one to the end of the path.

Thank you.