I want to search/filter for only audio files (.wav, .m4a and .mp3) in a specific folder and its subfolders. I know there are some specific commands that you can give in the search bar, but I forgot about them. I also know about the filter (Ctrl-I), but I don’t know whether you can filter by file type. I can’t find any documentation on this. Can someone enlighten me?
Seems that only is possible filter 1 thing at once. And after you can lock it for all folders.
The arrow points to the lock “Keep filter when changing folders”.
If you change the folder, the filter remains until you unlock it.
It seems to have no other uses.
Regards
you can add a column to the details view that lets you sort by file type in alphabetical order.
Thanks a lot. I know about all of that (well, didn’t know about the possibility to lock the filter, but never needed it 
), and I use it. I just feel it would be very convenient to be able to combine and save a filter/sorting combination, and wondered whether it might already have been implemented…
As it seems this is not the case, I might add a feature request on bugs.kde.org.
Dolphin’s filter bar supports qt’s QRegExp syntax which should allow creating more powerful filtering expression:
I just never got around to learning how to do what I wanted, it never works for me.
I think supporting a more widely understood regular expression syntax would do a lot for the filter bar, but previous bug reports have been disregarded because “everyone got used to the current behavior”, so I guess there has to be someone who knows how to do this?
You can install Kfind to perform more advanced searches. Beside that, I found that you can seperate patterns with a |, so for example, typing .pdf|.png in dolphins search bar will list files with these file extensions.
Sorry, I have to correct myself. The filter bar uses QRegExp in “wildcard mode” only, which has a much smaller feature set:
| c | Any character represents itself apart from those mentioned below. Thus c matches the character c. |
| ? | Matches any single character. It is the same as . in full regexps. |
| * | Matches zero or more of any characters. It is the same as .* in full regexps. |
| […] | Sets of characters can be represented in square brackets, similar to full regexps. Within the character class, like outside, backslash has no special meaning. |
So, sadly I don’t think it’s possible to filter the way you would like to this way.
The problem with any search is that it isn’t updated immediately until you hit F5. If you could put something like “wav|mp3|m4a” into the filter box that would be awesome…
1 Like
The search bar and the filter box are different things. The filterbox (Ctrl-I) only filters in the current folder by the given pattern, it does not search subfolders und you can use only a single pattern. For a search in the current folder and it’s subfolders you need to use the search bar (click the magnifier icon in the tool bar), there you can search also subfolders and use multiple patterns separated by a |.