pop-os
COSMIC Files assumes 'move' when dragging files, rather than 'copy'. Can this be configurable?
The file manager in COSMIC assumes that I want to "move" files when I drag them, but there is no visual indication that this assumption is being made, so I didn't notice it until after the files were moved. Usually 'copy' would be the default in most file managers, or I would be given a choice when releasing the drag (Dolphin does this). This seems like behavior that should either be changed (defaulting to copy, as a reasonable user might expect), or be made configurable (to select the default action when dragging a file from one location to another).
Usually 'copy' would be the default in most file managers,
Moving is the default when dragging files between different locations on the same drive in Windows Explorer, the macOS Finder, and GNOME's Nautilus. All of these do "Copy" by default only if moving between different drives. I believe this is the intention for COSMIC Files, although the copy for different drives isn't implemented yet. (Do you have an example of a file manager that copies by default even within the same drive?)
That said, being able to configure the behavior and/or get the option every time via a context menu would be nice-- I'm also a KDE user with Dolphin configured (by default) to show me the menu options every time, to avoid ambiguity. Windows Explorer offers the context menu as an option when right-click-dragging instead, which there's already another feature request open for: https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-files/issues/123
I should clarify that I was dragging files to another drive, so having it default to 'move' was quite a surprise. Additionally, while it is true that many file managers default to 'move' within the same drive, they also display a visual indicator of which option is being assumed.
When operating between internal drive and a folder mapped from my NAS, cosmic-files still defaults to move operation. I realize that the mounted folder looks like part of the local file system. Other file managers make a distinction. Also, some file managers bring up a menu when you release a mouse button to drop files: "copy and skip", "copy and replace", "move and skip", "move and replace."
I think it would be nice to have a tooltip next to the cursor that says what will happen on drop, if possible. Rough screenshot edit:
We have a design for manual configuration but for now I have made drag and drops to external drives copy instead of move.
Would it maybe be better to have right-click drag and drop, that opens a context menu with copy, move, etc. on drop, rather than additional settings?
I think our design would work better since it can work with any input device. I can link it once we have it complete.
Though it's quite nice to be able to extract an archive by dropping it over the destination and selecting "Extract here". Not sure how else that could be done (but it's mostly applicable to mouse input).