File Explorer Views
You may not realize it, but every time you open a folder in your File Explorer, the contents appear in one of eight views designed to make it easier for you to work with your files. There are four views that are icon-based (i.e., Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large). If one of these does not look exactly right to you, just press and hold down CTRL and use your mouse wheel to zoom in and out to get it to the right size you are looking for. If you are using a touchpad, you can use the pinch gesture.
The remaining four views display file names and metadata (i.e., List, Details, Tiles, and Content. The Details view is most likely the most used as it offers you easy filtering and sorting options.
You can click View on your File Explorer ribbon to change views and then select from the eight options you will find on the Layout tab. There are, of course, quicker ways to consider. See below…
On the right side of your status bar at the bottom of the window, simply click one of the two icons to switch to Details view or Large Icons view.
Also, if you, like me, prefer to use keyboard shortcuts, press CTRL | Shift| Number (each number, 1 through 8, switches to a different view).
These two shortcuts are worth committing to memory:
- CTRL | Shift |2 – Large Icons
- CTRL | Shift |6 – Details
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Maybe I am nostalgic but I surely miss some of the old features of the dual-pane ‘FileManager”. I think I use the Win+E (Open FileExplorer) more often than any other Windows’ keyboard shortcuts. My preferred default FileExplorer view is the “Details” view but I wish I knew how to permanently set the default column-width size, so that the “Name” column does not get truncated when file-name is longer than the preset/default column width! I am sure there must be some Registry setting which can change the column-width setting’ default but I never had the patience to dig deeper within the Registry.