Feature: Add option to show files from all subfolders recursively (flat view feature)

[fazioliamboina]

What feature or improvement do you think would benefit Files?

sometimes i have 100 folders, but only 500 files. in this case i fire up XnViewMP to browse the parent folder recursively. this way i can finnish my work in a fraction of the clicks, and im less likely to forget doing something.

Requirements

add to folder right click context menu "Show all files (including subfolders)"

Files Version

3.0.15.0

Windows Version

10.0.22631.2861

Comments

No response

[Josh65-2201]

Thanks for the feedback, can you show a screenshot of what this looks like.

[fazioliamboina]

You can download XnViewMP, because it has this feature. it shows the thumbnails from all subfolders into the same viewgrid.

[fazioliamboina]

You can achieve the same functionality by searching for "." in Yair's Files app. it also loads all thumbnails from subfolders into the same view. however it will usually crash.

[Josh65-2201]

Files does support searching folders the same as Windows File Explorer.

[fazioliamboina]

it is not a matter of search. i just meant to say that searching for "." is what the feature would look like. but is not as intuitive as right clicking and choosing "show all files from subfolders". also the files app usually crashes when i do this.

[yaira2]

Thank you for your feedback, you can display items from multiple folders via libraries. This isn't "on demand" the same way you're suggesting, but it might help until if/when we build this feature.

[yaira2]

I think this is a good feature request, but I'd like to hear some more use cases to see how much interest there is.

[yaira2]

Options such as paste, create new item, extract here etc would have to be disabled when using this option.

[fazioliamboina]

XnViewMP is the preffered browser to me, and to many others. Why dont you investigate that user base, and how they are using it.

you have 10k downloads, not even users. xnviewmp have 15k active website visitors, every month. 500k downloads.

please turn the file browser into a gallery app. this is what people want. those people dont come to this guthub to ask for these features, because they already have xnviewmp. you can really kill xnviewmp using WinUI man... your app will be on top of all the gallery comparison websites. it will be what you need.

xnviewMP is a browser-first photo app design. File browsers really need to be a gallery, its the future. That means, add fullscreen view, pinch and zoom, slideshow browse-trough, and flat view. you dont have to plan it all that much, you just have to copy xnviewmp. it works.... its already good enough.

[drandarov-io]

I think this is a good feature request, but I'd like to hear some more use cases to see how much interest there is.

I feel like this would be a great feature. While it could be described more diplomatically than the post above this one does, the use case is indeed to a large degree for image galleries. Images, photos are often times sorted in deep folder structures due to association with years, months events and there are many times you just want to look through all photos of a subtree without navigating down and up the file tree excessively.

One other use case is often looking through files that are categorized by folder structures due to certain programs requiring it but are all of the same type and looking through them in an overview is extremely useful.

It is also indeed a feature that many alternatives offer, especially new ones.