How to create a subfolder?

Yes, I know: you can either right-click on free space and choose ‘New Entry’ > ‘Folder’, or press CTRL+SHIFT+N. However, right-clicking on a file does not give you this option. I find this counterintuitive.

Even worse, when I right-click on a folder, I can choose ‘New entry’ > ‘Folder’. But it doesn’t work. I would expect Dolphin to create a new subfolder. Ctrl+Shift+N creates a folder at the same level as the chosen folder, but not a subfolder.

I am on Dolphin 25.08.0 / KDE Frameworks 6.17.0 / Manjaro Wayland.

Yes, I know: you can either right-click on free space and choose ‘New Entry’ > ‘Folder’, or press CTRL+SHIFT+N. However, right-clicking on a file does not give you this option. I find this counterintuitive.

Why? If you right-click on a file, it will give you a contextual menu pertaining to that file. Contextual menus are that: menus that pertain to the current context. You cannot create folders within in files, so the option to do so is not there.

Even worse, when I right-click on a folder, I can choose ‘New entry’ > ‘Folder’. But it doesn’t work. I would expect Dolphin to create a new subfolder. Ctrl+Shift+N creates a folder at the same level as the chosen folder, but not a subfolder.

Again why do you expect that? You have selected a folder, you can create subfolders within folders, so the contextual menu (i.e., the menu relevant to your current context of having selected a folder) will give you that option.

Edit: My apologies, I misunderstood. You may be seeing a bug in the second case. In version 25.08.1 on Arch it works as expected.

I have just tried this and it appears to work the way you would like it to behave.

  1. Context menu on empty space creates within current folder
  2. Context menu on a folder creates sub folder within that folder
  3. CTRL+SHIFT+N with a folder selected creates a sub folder within that folder
  4. CTRL+SHIFT+N without a selected folder creates a sub folder for the current folder

Dolphin: 25.08.1
KDE Frameworks: 6.18.0
Qt: Using 6.9.2 and built against 6.9.2

I can replicate this on my system. Right click on a folder and do “Create new … Folder” and nothing happens. No error message, and nothing logged when running Dolphin from the terminal.

I can also replicate this.

My setup:

Operating System: Fedora Linux 42
KDE Plasma Version: 6.4.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.17.0
Qt Version: 6.9.2
Kernel Version: 6.16.7-200.fc42.x86_64 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 16 × AMD Ryzen 7 5700X 8-Core Processor
Memory: 32 GiB of RAM (31.3 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti

and Dolphin 25.08.0.

This may have been fixed in Dolphin 25.08.1.

Right, it could have been fixed by this commit.

Although that commit addresses bug 508196 which sounds similar to what you and I are seeing, but not exactly the same.

The bug creator says:

In detail view mode when I create a new sub-folder with context menu, then it is created in the right clicked folder.

i.e. right-click worked fine for them, whereas it doesn’t work for you and me on 25.08.0.

Ok, so I’m extremely confused now. I have Dolphin open, and a temp folder open with a single video file inside it.

When I ‘right-click’ on free space I don’t see New Entry.

I see + Create New > Folder.

However, if I select a file (or a number of files) I see New folder from selected.

This is Dolphin 25.08.0 / Frameworks 6.17 / Wayland Plasma 6.3.6.

Me too. I wonder if OP is using Dolphin in a non-English language and inferring what the English label might be.

Is that from an extension like this? Create folder from selected files - KDE Store

Ah, that’s quite possible - sorry. It’s slightly janky because it creates the new ‘container’ folder with the name ‘newfolder’ too.

So yes, OP - look at that post and check out that new entry to the service menu, it’s a good one.

I generally use that when I’m doing something like tidying up a huge folder, or sorting config files out when I have a bug to track down (i.e. select half the contents, then move those all to a new folder, log out/log in again to test).

What I couldn’t do is click to select a file, then use ‘New Folder’ to create a new folder inside that, the new folder (Ctrl_Shift_N) just appears next to it, so no different to clicking the dolphin background.

You’re right, I use a non-english language on my system. I translated the text somewhat inaccurately. I mean exactly that: Create New > Folder

when you right click on a folder and choose new > folder it should pop up a dialog asking you for the name

perhaps this dialog is not found or not being triggered properly.

sounds like a bug with the install/distro, is what i’m saying.

This should be fixed in newest version of Dolphin like mentioned in earlier comment in this thread.

At least for me the following works:

  1. Right click any folder
  2. Create new → folder
  3. Folder creation popup appears, press ok
  4. Enter the folder you right clicked
  5. New folder is there yay

Great, thanks, I’ll tell you what happens when I get Dolphin 25.08.1 in Fedora!

It does indeed work fine for me with Dolphin 25.08.1 on Fedora.