Display folder content when "Hover" over a folder icon

[bkej]

Hello,

Do you know a software that can be the following :

When you mouse *hover* over a desktop Folder icon, it automatically shows its content, in a popup

Reason : I have many folders on my desktop : "TODO" Folder, "MUSIC" Folder, and I too rarely open them, so a display content when "hover" would be great!

Thank you.

[4goTTen21]

Originally Posted by bkej

Hello,

Do you know a software that can be the following :

When you mouse *hover* over a desktop Folder icon, it automatically shows its content, in a popup

Reason : I have many folders on my desktop : "TODO" Folder, "MUSIC" Folder, and I too rarely open them, so a display content when "hover" would be great!

Thank you.

Sorry, I think there's no one.

What you could do is reorganize all your files in a single window then "Sort by type" and separte by type in folders.

[sicknero]

An alternative solution ...

ClassicShell allows you to add custom shortcuts to the Windows Start Menu.

You could easily add shortcuts to the directories you mention to your Start Menu and then view the contents in pop-out submenus, like this;



I do a lot of Explorer navigation straight from my Start Menu in this way, I much prefer it to a cluttered Desktop.

Another alternative would be QtTabBar which will more or less do exactly what you ask. It's a great program but in my own experience it has been a bit buggy and prone to lagging/hanging which is why I prefer to achieve a similar end using ClassicShell.

[sicknero]

I just installed QtTabBar quickly to do a couple of screenshots for you.

I don't think there's an option to work by mouse hover - you have to click the little blue arrow that appears when you mouse-over a folder - but other than that I think it does exactly what you're asking. It also has this rather nifty media preview pop-out ...



... which works with audio/video/text files too ...



If I remember correctly however, the video preview only works if you have WMP set as your default player which of course also means installing extra codecs to have it work with more than a handful of video types yada yada ...

Anyway, this latest version actually seems quite solid at first look, I'll probably keep it for now and it might be worth your giving it a go. It does add a whole raft of useful stuff to native Windows Explorer which is great when it all works smoothly.

It requires Net v4 and if it were me I would do a back up of my O/S before installing.

Let us know how you get on.

[sicknero]

Update ... the media preview tooltip in the latest QTTB does work now without Windows Media Player being set as your default media handler. It does still use the WMP engine though so codecs are necessary for a decent range of filetypes.

The problem at the mo is that the tooltip preview hotkeys for Play/Pause etc don't seem to be working. I'm waiting for some feedback on the forum to see if this is a known issue or peculiar to my own installation.

[curiousdan]

Thanks Sicknero, never heard of ClassicShell but I'm now asking where it has been whole my life. Great little software..

[Burn-IT]

I thought that was one of the standard options for mouse over actions in Explorer type programs.
I'm not on Linux at the moment.