Directory Opus has the option to display files differently depending on which files are in a folder.
Let’s say you have a folder with a bunch of pictures. By default it will look like this:
![](https://scribbleghost.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/File-display-with-images-in-Directory-Opus.png)
To set it up, let’s first activate “Content Type detection”:
- Go to Preferences ➜ Folders ➜ Folder Behaviour
- Enable Folder Content Type detection for all local and network.
Now Directory Opus will pay attention to the type of files that reside in a folder. But it doesn’t know how you want to display each folder. This is why we need to edit the Folder formats.
- Go to Preferences ➜ Folders ➜ “Folder Formats“.
- Under “Content Type Formats” you can see a list of default “Folder Formats“.
- Make sure “Images” is checked and double-click on it to set a custom view for a file type group.
- Go to the Display tab and set the view to Thumbnails.
![](https://scribbleghost.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Content-detection-for-folder-types-in-Directory-Opus.gif)
Next time you enter a folder with pictures, Directory Opus will display the files as thumbnails because it can detect the majority of file types in the folder.
Here is an example.
![](https://scribbleghost.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Directory-Opus-Folder-view-with-thumbnails.png)
Adding more file types
If you want this to apply to other file types too, such as RAW and BMP files, you can do that by adding these file types.
- Go to Settings ➜ File Types
- Select the Images group and click on Edit.
- Click on the drop-down button you can see all the file extensions that are included in the Images group.
- Add a new file extension to the group. For example,
.raw
or.bmp
.
In theory, you could also make a completely new format, just for RAW pictures by adding a new file type group.
This will let Directory Opus view ARW files as image files and therefore display them as thumbnails. 😀
![](https://scribbleghost.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Content-detection-for-RAW-files.gif)
Content threshold
You might be thinking “what if I have a folder with mixed content like pictures and documents?“.
Good question 😂! This is where the so-called “content threshold” comes in.
The content threshold sets the percentage of how many files of a type a folder should have to activate a certain folder format.
For example, if a folder contains 75% of image-type files and 25% of other files, the images folder format will be activated, if the threshold is set to 75%.
You can change this threshold for each folder format.
- Preferences ➜ Folders ➜ Folder Formats ➜ Double click on a format ➜ Options (tab) ➜ Content Threshold
- Adjust how much of a file type group the folder should contain for the custom view to kick in by changing the precentage.
![](https://scribbleghost.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Directory-Opus-12-Changing-content-threshold-1024x594.png)
For some reason setting the percentage to 100% does not seem to work… Might be a bug, but 99% will have the same effect.
Usually, I would just leave it to the default of 10%.
If you have any tips or handy tricks on how to make the customization in Directory Opus to the next level let us know 😀
Sources
Directory Opus Help – Content types and content threshold
Holy crap. This helped me so much setting things up!