I hope this doesn’t violate the low-quality rule. For those who don’t know, when you right click an archive in Dolphin, the extract menu has a “Extract archive here, autodetect subfolder” option and its absolutely brilliant! If you’ve ever extracted a zip, tar, etc and ended up with files splattered everywhere this feature will prevent that. Basically when you choose this option it will:

  • Look to see if the archive has a top level folder, if it does, it will extract it normally
  • If it does not (so all of the files are at the top level), it will automatically create a folder for the archive and extract those top level files into it

It’s something I really wish other file managers had, and is just another one of those features from the KDE team that gives me the “The developer(s) who created this also use this in their daily lives” impression (which is not to say that others don’t). You can of course just open your favorite archive utility and manually check, then manually make the folder yourself and extract the files into there, but this lets me skip those couple of steps and I appreciate that so much.

  • markstos@lemmy.world
    35·
    1 year ago

    It’s a useful feature, but I couldn’t have guessed your explanation from the name.

    It seems to me that the default extract option should work that way and this option should just be removed from the menu.

    I have never once wanted extracting an archive file to litter the current directory with files.

    The only exception would be an archive which contains a single inner file.

    • russjr08@outpost.zeuslink.netOP
      11·
      1 year ago

      It would be nice if it were at least configurable to set as the default extract option. If I had to take a guess, it’d be that it’s not the default option because the amount of single files before needing a subfolder could vary between different people. Some folks may want only one, and others may be fine if it goes up to say 3. However, I suppose that could also just be a configurable option.

      That being said, I’ve at the very least developed the muscle memory to always click that option no matter what. I can’t tell by your comment if you weren’t aware of the feature, but if not then hopefully it can be of use to you moving forward as well!

    • Discover5164@lemm.ee
      3·
      1 year ago

      true, i’ve used kde for a long time but did not know what that option did.

      i always created the folder manually, moved the zip, and then used extract here.

  • Kyrinar@lemmy.world
    25·
    1 year ago

    Holy shit, that’s awesome. I always get annoyed when there’s no top level and I have to make one manually. Thanks for sharing!

  • shotgun_crab@lemmy.world
    201·
    1 year ago

    And it will only create a directory if the compressed file has more than one file inside It’s the perfect behavior.

  • penquin@lemmy.kde.social
    16·
    1 year ago

    Funny enough, I discovered this a couple of weeks ago when I extracted a zip file with the top option and I had like 100 files all over my downloads directory. I was so pissed I had to delete them all one by one and make sure that I don’t delete the files that I actually want there. It was so painful. Then looked at the bottom one and it made sense and it was an “aha I fucking love kde” moment.

    • not_amm@beehaw.org
      1·
      1 year ago

      Doesn’t Ctrl+Z undo the extraction? I may be dreaming, but I remember there was a fast option to delete all the files extracted. Anyway, we already know about autodetection B)

  • gazby@lemmy.world
    13·
    1 year ago

    It’s one of the very few things I miss from Windows - the 7zip shell extension had the same feature, but literally put the autodetected folder name in the menu so you knew what it would be before even clicking. Such a small thing but so significant a UX boost.

    • banazir@lemmy.ml
      6·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, when I migrated back to Linux this was a baffling omission to me. I used it a lot in Windows and 7zip. Luckily I realized Plasma is awesome and Ark has this feature. Still kind of miss 7zip though.

  • Mio@feddit.nu
    2·
    1 year ago

    When I am on Windows and extract, I always get the top folder, but then it appears some compressed a folder with that exact name so I end up with two folders. Have to clean that up manually is really bad. I use Windows built in for zip and Winrar. Never even though about this problem before that it could be handled that way. Thanks for the tip!

  • Phrodo_00@lemmy.world
    24·
    1 year ago

    It’s something I really wish other file managers had,

    This has been the standard behavior for gnome for like around 20 years…