Folder-local options for the file manager

[jyothisv]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe

First of all, thank you very much for this awesome project! I am impressed by Yazi's speed as well as features. I currently use lf and would love to switch over.

One feature that I really like in lf is the ability to set properties only in a specific directory. For example, we can use time-based sorting for say the Downloads directory while keeping natural sorting for all other directories. I think that would be a a nice addition to Yazi.

Will you be willing to contribute this feature?

• Yes, I'll give it a shot

Describe the solution you'd like

There should be an option to specify directory-specific settings in yazi.toml. Probably we can add a list of directory, settings table under the [manager].

An example:

[[directory_local_settings]]
directory = "~/Downloads"
sort_by = "modified"
sort_reverse = true

If the directory name ends with a slash, the settings would be applied to its sub-directories as well.

A related feature would be a global option to make sorting commands always be directory-local. Usually, when I sort the files in a directory, I don't want the sorting to persist when I go to the parent directory. So this option would be quite useful to me.

Describe alternatives you've considered

No response

Additional context

No response

[sxyazi]

Sounds good to me. Maybe we can have:

[folder]
rules = [
  { name = "Downloads/", sort_by = "modified", sort_reverse = true, preload = false, ... }
]

to keep the same style as others.

[tianze0926]

With the introduction of DDS I can now achieve a basic version using the plugin system:

-- ~/.config/yazi/plugins/folder-rules.yazi/init.lua
return {
    setup = function()
        ps.sub("cd", function()
            local dir = tostring(cx.active.current.cwd)
            if string.find(dir, "Downloads") then
                ya.manager_emit("sort", { "modified", reverse = true, dir_first = true })
            else
                ya.manager_emit("sort", { "alphabetical", reverse = false, dir_first = true })
            end
        end)
    end,
}

-- ~/.config/yazi/init.lua
require("folder-rules"):setup()

But I’m uncertain about how much overhead there would be compared to when it’s implemented in Rust.