Arrange the interface

tessoa supports reordering sidebar component tabs, context-menu items and Details columns. This page covers their drag actions and settings.

What the three have in common

• Dragging applies immediately. Hold an item, drag to the insertion position and release; no setting needs to be enabled first.
• The order is remembered. Sidebar arrangements restore with each window's session; menus and column layouts follow their own settings scopes.
• Menus and columns also have settings pages. Use their up and down buttons to reorder, as described below.

The order of sidebar sections

Sidebar sections appear in component tab strips, with one page visible per pane. Tabs can be reordered within a pane or moved to another pane.

1. Hold a component tab, such as Tags.
2. Drag left or right within its tab strip, or onto another pane's tab strip.
3. Release at the desired insertion position.

Drag the Tags component tab along the strip and release at a new insertion position to reorder it.

Dropping a component tab at a content area's upper or lower edge creates a stacked pane when enough height is available; dropping into the middle of another pane joins that pane. Use the triangle on the strip's left to collapse a pane; clicking the tab itself switches pages. See Sidebar & component pages.

Use Settings → Sidebar to hide pages separately. Hiding a page does not delete its data or clear its place in the arrangement.

The order of context menus

There are two ways in: drag inside the menu itself, or arrange everything in the settings page.

Dragging inside the menu

Right-click to open a menu, hold one of its items, drag it up or down, and let go — it has moved. This is the quickest way to change things: to put Delete further from Open, one right-click is all it takes.

Holding Rename and dropping it where Copy sat: the item has moved, and the menu stays open.

If you would rather not move things by accident, turn on Lock in-menu drag reorder in the settings and the menu stops responding to drags; the settings page is then the only way in.

Arranging in the settings page

1. Press Ctrl+Shift+P (macOS: ⌘+,) to open Settings.
2. Find the Input group and click Context Menu Order.
3. Drag the rows on that page to change their order.

The switches in the upper half govern every menu, while each row in the lower half governs one entry only — the accelerator key, the ↑ ↓ and the toggle at its right end all apply to that row alone. The ↑ on Open is greyed out because it already sits first.

The page splits menus into five groups, each ordered separately:

Group	Which menu
File context menu	The one from right-clicking a file or folder
Background context menu	The one from right-clicking empty space in the list
Sidebar · Tag menu	The one behind ⋯ on a sidebar tag row
Sidebar · Layout menu	The one behind ⋯ on a sidebar layout row
Sidebar · Bookmark menu	The one behind ⋯ on a sidebar bookmark row

When a group has a lot of entries, use Filter menu entries… above the list instead of scrolling. Reordering works while a filter is active: the entries you moved take their new places in the full table.

Some of the entries other software installs write the name of the file you right-clicked into their own label — an archiver's Add to "report.zip" is the usual case. This page draws that part as <name>, so entries of that kind take a single row: whichever file you right-clicked, you are editing that one row, and its order, accelerator key and toggle then apply to the whole kind.

Reset Order puts everything back at once — it clears the order, the accelerator keys and the visibility of all five groups.

Keeping an item out of a menu

Every row on that page also carries a toggle at its right end. Switch it off and that item stops appearing in menus of this kind. A common use is taking Delete Permanently out of the file menu, or switching off a few entries you never use to make the menu shorter.

A row switched off doesn't leave the settings page: it stays in the same position, still holding its accelerator key, ready to be switched back on. The accelerator goes away with it, so a hidden item no longer occupies a letter.

This works per menu kind: the same item can stay in the file menu and be dropped from the background menu.

On Windows this page also lists the entries other software installed into the system — cloud drives, antivirus tools, 7-Zip and the like — and their toggles work the same way, see shell extensions. Custom commands are listed here too, under their current names.

Note

The settings page only lists menu items you have opened at least once. A menu's contents change with what you right-clicked — one file, one folder, a multiple selection, or empty space each produce a slightly different set — so tessoa records them as it sees them. When a group reads (items appear here after you open that menu), right-click the matching target once and come back.

Menu accelerator keys

The same page also handles the letter accelerators. With Menu accelerator keys on, every item in a menu is assigned a letter; while the menu is open, pressing that letter runs the item, and / switches back to typing a search.

Setting	What it does
Menu accelerator keys	The master switch
Show accelerator keys uppercase	Changes how they are drawn, not which key to press
Case-sensitive accelerator keys	With this on, an uppercase press no longer matches a lowercase accelerator
Enter search (menu search box)	The key that switches from accelerators back to typing a search; / by default

A row that has no accelerator yet reads Not set in its key cell.

Note

Changing the interface language means reordering the file and background menus once. tessoa identifies a menu item by the text it displays, and that text changes with the language — so after a switch the old arrangement no longer matches and the entries fall back to their default positions. The three sidebar menus are unaffected: they identify the action itself, independently of its wording. Switch back to the original language and your old order returns with it.

The columns of the details list

The details list has six columns: Name, Date Modified, Type, Folders, Files, and Size. All of them except Name can be hidden.

Reordering columns

Hold a column header and drag it left or right, then let go. The other columns move aside and slide into their new positions once you release.

Holding the Size header and dragging it left onto Type: the whole column comes along, and the others move aside one by one.

Name does not take part in reordering — it stays pinned to the left as the first column.

Resizing columns

Move the pointer onto the divider between two columns, then hold and drag sideways. Dividers only respond in the header row, so nothing in the list area can trigger one by accident.

When you drag a column's right divider, that column's right edge follows the pointer: everything to the right shifts along keeping its own width, and everything to the left is untouched. When the columns together do not fill the window, dragging right consumes the empty space on the right first and only then starts squeezing the columns beyond — so the gap left behind by hidden columns can be taken back with a drag.

Double-click a divider and the column to its left fits its contents: the width settles at exactly what the longest entry in that column needs, and the columns beyond it shift along. File Explorer and Finder do the same. The width eases into place rather than jumping.

Dragging the divider to the right of Date Modified: the column narrows, then goes back to its original width, with the columns beyond it shifting along.

Choosing which columns are shown

Right-click the header row to open the Columns shown menu, which lists the six hideable columns, each with a tick. Clicking one shows or hides it and leaves the menu open, so you can carry on ticking.

Entry	What it does
Age / Date Modified / Type / Folders / Files / Size	Ticked shows the column, unticked hides it
Name	Listed, but always ticked and not clickable; hovering it shows First column, cannot be hidden
Size columns to fit window	Redistributes the widths of the currently shown columns so they fill the window exactly

The tick in front of a row is that column's current state. Size columns to fit window at the bottom carries no tick — it runs once when you click it, rather than staying on or off.

At least one column has to stay. When only one is left, its entry is not clickable and hovering it shows Keep at least one column.

A hidden column is put away rather than discarded: it remembers where it sat and how wide it was, and comes back to that position at that width. Hiding a column does not close the gap on the right — those widths are ones you dragged out yourself, and tessoa won't re-lay them out because you hid something else. To reclaim the space, use Size columns to fit window in the same menu, or drag a column's right divider rightwards until it meets the window's edge.

Managing them in Settings

The same state has a page of its own, where order and visibility are handled together: open Settings, find the View group and click List view columns.

Applies to sits at the top of that page:

Value	What it means
All windows	The default. Changes go to the global setting and every window follows
This window only	This window keeps a copy of its own, and changing it leaves other windows alone

Below that the columns are split into two lists, ordered separately:

List	Where it applies
Folders	Columns shown while browsing ordinary folders, including Age, the time since the last modification
This PC	Type, file system, free space, size, % Used, drive letter and other columns at the top level of This PC; Age is not available here

Each row is [column name] [↑] [↓] [toggle]: the arrows move it up or down, the toggle at the right decides whether it is shown. Reset to default puts one list back.

Name is in neither list — it is pinned as the first column, so it takes no part in ordering and cannot be hidden. In each list the first row's ↑ and the last row's ↓ are greyed out: there is nowhere left to move in that direction.

Note

Column widths are still kept per pane. After a split both panes show the same columns in the same order, but each keeps its own widths — widening Name on the left leaves the right pane as it was.

See also

Interface tour · View modes · Shell extensions · Settings overview