I am happy to announce that Dolphin has a new view mode: Columns. Each column shows one folder. Select a folder and its content opens in the next column, so the path from the folder you opened down to your selection stays on screen. This layout is known as Miller columns, after Mark S. Miller, who created it in 1980.
Whether the view goes into Dolphin 26.12 is decided on November 12th, depending on feedback until then, you have been warned.
Please test if you want it in 26.12, and soon.
Congrats, Méven! It works really well. I’ve wanted this for ten years, so I’m happy. 
Thank you so much! I’m very excited.
I still don’t think this is going to be for me, but I’m trying it out at the moment and it seems pretty solid.
Going on a ramble for a bit: I was mainly wondering how it was going to work with the “view mode per folder” setting, but I guess it was to be expected that it really doesn’t. It’s a view mode which you have to commit to using everywhere for it to work (which kind of voids @meven’s plan on removing global view mode, I think).
My personal expectations would be that Column View is not a traditional “view mode”, but a new settings category like “navigation mode”, which would consist of the “old” model and the new columns model. Then the actual view modes “icons”, “compact” and “details” could live inside either of them. That would’ve probably been a bigger a chunk of work, I guess.
One actual point I found a bit weird: when I unselect a folder (or select a file) in a middle column, the deeper columns on the right just vanish. My expectation would be they stay, unless I select a different folder, then the columns update.
Hello. I just saw this news. I have a request for the developers. For more convenience in navigating among folders, is it possible to make the display mode of open parent folders a top priority? Because judging by the screenshot provided, the path is at the top, and the folders are in alphabetical order, but it will be extremely inconvenient where there are a lot of folders. Thank you for your attention.
My current kdelinux build is 202611060254, but afaict its dolphin does not yet have C/V. I see from updatectl list host that 202611081036 is now available. Does it have C/V? If not, is it still in the pipeline for kdelinux pls?
I’m not sure how the kde-unstable repository in archlinux is setup right now, but it doesn’t seem to include this change. It would be wonderful if there was a better testing repo for kde software as I’d like to help out, but don’t want to add so many AUR packages to my system 
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Dolphin should be easy enough to build though!
The easiest way in my opinion is listed in the article: install kde-builder and run
kde-builder --generate-config
kde-builder --install-distro-packages
kde-builder dolphin
kde-builder --run dolphin
This will add some build dependencies from the official arch repos, but everything KDE will be contained in a single folder (by default ~/kde). Initial download and building will probably take a bit, but it’s the best way to have up to date KDE software available.
edit: if you’re on arch unstable, you can probably do kde-builder dolphin --no-include-dependencies to download and build less, also from meven’s article.
This is more or less exactly what I was going to chime in with (after mentioning how stoked I am to have this view option available!).
My primary use case is during file operations, where I may have traversed deep into a folder’s structure, but need to copy or move a folder to one of the parent folders. It would be a boon for me to be able to drill down to a folder, click on the whitespace of any preceding folder/column to the left, and have any commands such as ctrl+v land on the folder you’ve clicked into, while keeping the subfolders/columns to the right open instead of changing/closing.
Tell us also how it feels that the first column is the folder that you opened, as reviewers disagreed on this.
For me, I think the current default as described (“the first column is the folder that you opened”) feels the most natural, and avoids the visual clutter of having a trail of columns that aren’t always important for the task at hand. As always, putting it behind an option flag isn’t a bad way to appease both camps as I can see arguments for either.
This works on regular arch. Dolphin master branch can be built with the stable KDE Frameworks always.
You can do drag and drop to/from any displayed folders. That one of the purpose on the column view.
A keyboard shortcut is probably not possible for column view.
This kind of workflow is already possible with split views, that has dedicated shortcuts to transfer between the two folders.
Let me rephrase, this is not crystal clear :
I think you mean the open parents should appear at the top of the folders in their respective column. Correct ?
If so, absolutely doable, and a good idea.
Yes! That’s exactly what I meant. Thank you.
For my workflow I really have no use for it, but I know several that have been wanting this. Nice, very nice.
Column View is available in KDE Linux 202611090254.
I just tried it today from AUR and I really like it.
The only thing that I find a bit confusing, and that may be a problem on my end, is that in this build (25.04.0.r76.gd7d3838-1) the Information panel is missing and I cannot find how to bring it up.
It is missing baloo-widgets dependency.
The aur compiliation might have some issue with it.
Someone on the Zorin forum has created an extensive file manager that includes ‘miller columns’ and a whole lot more and it works well on my PCLOS Debian based on “trixie” on Plasma 6.3.6.
It was designed for Gnome but works well on “trixie”, it won’t run on " bookworm":
More than one version a day, that is fully LLM developed apparently.
The sky is the limit with AI, the tricky is not burning your wings.
It is made in python, so the memory and perf might not be the best, and code comments are in French, so the origin author is likely French and the only contributor with claude and likely not a programmer judging by the commit comments.
Most of the features there are in dolphin. Nothing really new.
Others are questionable for a filemanager like search/replace and most are likely not complete.
It is great at making a pretty website…
This post does not really belong here IMO. This is KDE forum…
There must be dozen of AI generated filemanager projects with some variance of Miller Columns, that does not make them great neither worse promoting that early in a project.