UI idea: Dolphin/Gwenview's Ctrl+I filtering in KDE File Open dialog

Brainstorm
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When using File > Open in a large directory, I really want to be able to search on part of a filename. The KDE File Open dialog’s behavior matches Windows: the letters you type scroll to and select the first filename matching them at its start. But in a large directory often the word I want to search on is in the middle of the filename, e.g. I want typing “brai” to select Screenshot 2024-01-07 at 19-51-50 Latest Brainstorm topics - KDE Discuss.png (that’s the actual name Firefox gives a screenshot :wink:), or typing “2024” to select PXL_20240107_105029979.jpg.

Dolphin and Gwenview have this exact feature: you press Ctrl+I and the view filters to only show files that match what you type anywhere in their filename. So, why not share the code with the File Open dialog (and the flatpak portal)? The only difference for File Open might be to immediately select the first file matching what you filter on.

This was reported as bug 219054 “Show Filter Bar (Ctrl + I) feature in KDE file dialog”, which was marked as a duplicate of the confusingly titled bug 179483 “Expose UI to activate filtering feature in KDirOperator”, from 14 years ago. And it doesn’t sound like another duplicate bug 127517 at all.

Thanks for all you do!

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The “Filter” textbox already provides that functionality. And IMO it’s much more discoverable than Ctrl-I.

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The “Filter” textbox already provides that functionality. And IMO it’s much more discoverable than Ctrl-I.

Yes, I was just looking harder at the File > Open dialog and realized it already does what I want… doh! I somehow thought its “Filter” line was only to choose the file type extension, but it works exactly as it should when you type in it. Maybe Ctrl+I can be a keyboard shortcut to put the text caret in that field so the muscle memory carries over from Dolphin and Gwenview.

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Yes, and probably it should display something like “* (All Files)” instead of “All Files” to hint you that it’s more than a dropdown.

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