File browser

You can use the file browser to view and track changes to all files and folders in your project.

Navigate the file browser

To view the file browser, click Tools > File Browser. Each item in the file browser displays a file or folder icon, the file name, and the file size.

Files with uncommitted changes display a Git status badge. Edited files display a Modified badge and are highlighted yellow. New, renamed, or moved files display an Untracked badge and are highlighted green.

Click a change badge to show Staging with that file highlighted and scrolled into view. You can also focus the badge with Tab and press Enter or Space. If the file has both staged and unstaged changes, Staging highlights its unstaged entry. Click the entry in Staging to open its diff. Ignored-file badges are informational. For files inside a submodule or another repository, open that repository as a project to use this shortcut.

If Zide cannot refresh Git status, the file browser keeps the previous badges and dims them. Their tooltips include Git status could not be refreshed.

Click the Options icon in the Files activity to show dot folders, filter files, close all folders, create new files, and create new folders.

To select more than one file, use the shared gestures described in Select more than one item. Selection applies to files; clicking a folder expands or collapses it instead.

Open files

Click a file to open the file in the File view. If you open another file, that file will replace the existing file in the File view. To open another file in a new content tab, right-click the file and click Open in New Tab.

To view an HTML file in a browser, right-click the file and click Open in Browser. By default, the file opens in the built-in web browser.

Find Zide Assist sessions

To find the Zide Assist sessions that read or changed a file, right-click the file and select Find in Session List. For a folder, Session List shows sessions that used files in that folder or its subfolders. See Filter sessions.

Move files and folders

You can drag files and folders in the Files activity to rearrange where they are located in the project.

You can drag files and folders from your file manager into the Files activity to copy them into the project. You can also drag a file or folder out of the Files activity and drop it on your file manager or desktop.

Ignore files and folders

You can add an ignore rule from the shortcut menu without opening .gitignore.

1. Right-click an untracked file or folder.
2. Select Ignore File… or Ignore Folder….
3. Select a rule. A file always offers a rule for itself, and offers the same extension or the containing folder when the name and location allow it. A folder offers one rule, for the folder and its contents.
4. Read the rule and the target file in the preview, then select Add Rule.

Zide writes the rule to the .gitignore at the root of the repository that contains the path. For a path in a submodule or a nested repository, that is the inner repository, not the project you opened. Zide escapes special characters in the path, preserves the existing comments, order, and line endings, and does not add the same rule twice. Staging and the file browser refresh immediately.

Ignore rules do not apply to tracked paths, so the action is disabled for a path Git already tracks. To ignore one, remove it from the Git index first.

If a rule already covers the path, the action becomes Show Ignore Rule. The rule can come from a .gitignore, from .git/info/exclude, or from a global excludes file. Select the action to open that file. The action is disabled if Zide cannot locate that source.

Git LFS actions

A Git LFS file shows a Git LFS marker on the right of its row. Click the marker to open the file in the Details view. A download mark indicates Needs pull. The mark appears only after the Git LFS tab or a Details view loads the repository’s Git LFS status.

Right-click a file. Select Track with Git LFS… to add a pattern to .gitattributes. For a folder, select Track Folder with Git LFS…. For a Git LFS file, select Show in Git LFS to show the file in the Files section of the Git LFS tab.

When the file has lock actions, the tracking item moves into a Git LFS submenu with them. The lock actions are disabled if no lock server is configured. See Track a file from Staging or the file browser and Locks.

Sparse checkout status

When the repository uses sparse checkout, the file browser shows a Sparse checkout row above the tree. Select anywhere on the row to open the repository’s Sparse Checkout tab.

The status describes the repository or worktree the file browser belongs to, so it reads the same whether you are at the repository root or inside a subfolder. The row shows one of the following.

• Active: some directories are excluded from this working tree. This covers both cone mode and a custom pattern file, because the difference does not change what the file browser is telling you. Open the Sparse Checkout tab to see which mode is in use and to change the selection.
• Needs attention: the configuration is incomplete or unreadable. Hover the row to see what Git reported.
• Needs Git: Zide could not find a usable Git executable to ask.
• Unavailable: the Git command failed. Hover the row to see the error.

No row appears when the repository does not use sparse checkout. A repository whose status Zide could not read is never shown as one that does not use sparse checkout.

This row and the Submodules row below it are the same control saying different things: a subject, its state, and the tab that manages it, opened by selecting the row.

Each file browser tracks its own repository, so two projects, or a repository and its linked worktrees, each show their own status.

Submodule status

Repositories with submodules show a Submodules row above the tree. It summarizes the repository and opens its Submodules tab.

• No issues: nothing needs your attention. It is the same word a healthy submodule card uses, because the row and the card answer the same question.
• 2 need attention: that many submodules need initializing, updating, or another fix.
• 1 failed: an operation on that submodule failed and has not been put right. Any of them counts, not just a fetch: an update, an initialize, or the automatic reconciliation after a pull. Re-running that same operation successfully clears it.
• 1 unavailable: Zide could not read that submodule.

Failures and unreadable submodules are counted apart, so a repository with one of each reads 1 failed, 1 unavailable.

Having no working copy does not count as needing attention when the submodule folder is outside the sparse checkout.

The row counts the repository’s top-level submodules only. It reads Nested mismatch when a nested submodule is checked out at a commit different from the one its parent records and the top level has no issues. That is a note, not a warning: a nested submodule is normally behind after anyone works in it, and Update All is what puts it right. Select the row to open the Submodules tab, where each nested level reports its own state.

Two remote states are deliberately not the same. A submodule whose remote has moved on is the ordinary state of a shared project and is never counted; the Submodules tab is where you review or adopt those commits. A submodule whose recorded commit is missing from its remote is counted, because nobody who clones the project can fetch it.

Select the row to open this repository’s Submodules tab. When something needs attention, it marks every submodule the row just counted and scrolls to the first of them, so two that need you are two that are marked. The row keeps its place whatever it says, and carries no actions of its own.

Submodule attention also marks the Files activity icon while the panel is closed. Opening the file browser does not clear it. Fixing the repository does, and a retained failure clears when the same operation next succeeds.

What decides whether a file browser shows the row is its root, not where it is docked. The Files activity shows it, and so does a repository-root browser opened with Open as Tab. A browser scoped to a subfolder does not, because the row speaks for the whole repository, and neither does Standalone Files. Those keep the submodule markers and folder actions for the paths they show.

Filter files

To filter the file browser, press Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on macOS) or click the Options icon and then Show File Filter. Type into the Filter files field to filter the file browser with plain text or glob patterns. The filter bar shows the number of files that match the filter. Folders with files that match the filter expand to show where the files are located.

Press Ctrl+F again to select the filter text. Press Esc in the filter field to close the bar and clear the filter.

When you clear the filter, the file browser restores to its previous state.