Binarynights
A new update to ForkLift 4 is available. This version doesn’t contain the option to enter your previous license key to claim the upgrade bonus. That feature needs a little bit more testing but it is coming soon.
New
- Added Delete button to delete favorites inside the Favorite Manager (Favorites > Show Favorites)
- Option to use the Delete key to delete the selected favorite inside the Favorite Manager (Favorites > Show Favorites)
Improvements
- Tools now evaluate commands and parameters the same way as the Terminal
- Purchase menu disappears immediately after registering ForkLift
Fixes
- Fixes a possible crash when connecting to certain SFTP servers
- Purchase menu disappears immediately after registering ForkLift
- Fixes an issue during synchronization when “Delete orphaned items” and “Synchronize subfolders”
- Fixes an issue where files downloaded with zero bytes from certain SFTP servers
- Fixes some SFTP compatibility issues
- Fixes an issue with Google Drive when copying folders would fail with “No such file or directory” error
- Fixes an issue with OneDrive when files would appear multiple times in the file view
- Fixes an issue on FTP and SFTP connections when in column and icon view drag operations were treated as move operations instead of copy
- Fixes an issue where duplicated favorites didn’t function as expected
- Fixes an issue with Content search, which was only working correctly when “Search in Subfolders” was enabled
- Numerous minor fixes and improvements
No comment 🙂
I’m sorry for your frustration. I know that you love ForkLift and want to use ForkLift 4 with keyboard selection in it but a decision not to add keyboard selection to ForkLift 4 was made by the developer and he hasn’t changed his mind. I told before that if the demand for it will be huge, we might bring it back but we haven’t received a lot of emails demanding this feature back, so keyboard selection won’t be added to ForkLift 4.
So, you have one single developer who decided to remove keyboard selection? Only in this topic a few requests for, well not a feature, basic functionality existed in FL3.
I’m sorry to see a totally wrong attitude from you here. It looks to me that you are frustrated when people are having negative comments about the FL4. I can understand that too. But you must understand, you and your product exist because of users/customers. Not another way around. You must listen to your users, if you don’t, in the long term you will lose them all. Once that happens, it will be extremely hard, probably impossible, to bring them back. Why? Because they will move on and find alternative solution. Please take this as a really friendly comment and forward to your stubborn developer 😉
Btw, I gave up on FL4 a long time ago during the beta. Nothing really new, just less. So, yeah, I already moved on from FL4. It’s just a matter of time to move on from FL3.
Does FL4 support for selecting files with shift+arrow keys? Or is there no way to select files with the keyboard at all?
(I would test, but FL4 doesn’t work on Big Sur)
ForkLift 4 has support for that feature. You can select adjacent items with Shift+Arrow keys.
Is there a method of selecting discontinuous (non-adjacent) items? I wasn’t able to find one.
There is no option to do that only with the keyboard in ForkLift 4.
Not any word about the missing “Basic-Functionality” from many users –> Support of the keyboard-selection of items with Spacebar… No further comments too 🙂
I’m sorry that you miss that feature so much, but it was clearly stated that keyboard selection is not part of ForkLift 4. We don’t plan to add that feature to ForkLift 4. Please try to accept this fact and keep using ForkLift 3 or look for an alternate software if you rely on that feature and can’t live without it.
Still no keyboard selection? Well that blows. Guess I’ll have to wait some more.
I’m sorry but we won’t add keyboard selection to ForkLift 4 in the foreseeable future.
You won’t or you can’t?
We won’t.
.eml still can’t be opened via quicklook. The mail is not parsed out in the preview pane. Everything, including all the mail server stuff, is displayed in plain text. Attachments are displayed as long unrecognized text blocks.
Have you enabled full disk access?
Yes, I have enabled full disk access
Please contact us regarding this issue in an email at support [at] binarynights [dot] com and also share the path of one of those files and a screenshot of how it is being previewed. If you also have FL3, then check if that can preview the same file or not, and let us know in the mail.
I am looking forward to Japanese localization!
We want to add full Japanese localization to ForkLift 4. A kind user has created an almost full localization, which he has published on his blog: https://ylupin.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-11909.html You can download it from there and add it to ForkLift 4 if you want.
Once again, no keyboard selection any more. Worthless for me and I really regret the purchase!
I’m sorry to hear that. We won’t add keyboard selection to ForkLift 4. If you don’t want to use it like that, then we will refund your order. Please contact us if you want a refund at support [at] binaryhingts [dot] com with the subject Refund. Include your Order ID in the email.
Please add a feature to allow only matching files/folder to be displayed in the panel when you enter part of the file name.
Currently, when I start typing, the cursor is set to the first file that starts with the same letter. It would be much more convenient if the list of files on the panel was filtered by the substring I entered.
The only file manager I saw with this feature was Nimble Commander and it was great, can you do the same in ForkLift? It could be optionally disabled for people who wants the old behaviour.
We call that Quick Filter and adding support for that is on our feature request list but we haven’t decided yet if we will add it later.
You can filter the items in ForkLift. Click the magnifying glass in the search field and make sure that only by Name is selected. With that set up, if you use the Command-F keyboard shortcut, then you will filter the items. With the Tab key you can switch back to the pane.
Thank you for the answer,
Yes, I know it’s possible to use the search, but it requires more additional key presses and not so convenient just for quick navigation. Also I often use search by content and including subfolders, which makes me switch between search modes constantly.
Please consider the “Quick filter” feature, as no publicly available file manager other than “Nimble” still supports it.
🙏
CRAX Commander does have that feature too.
Is it possible to set modified date field revert to old version. The date column is show “today”, “yesterday” if modification date is that.
Open the View Options (View > Show View Options or Command-J) and deselect “Use relative dates”. You have to do that in all open tabs. You can also save that as the default setting by clicking the “Use as Defaults” button on the View Options Panel and then select View > Restore Default View Settings or use the Command-Option-R keyboard shortcut in all the other tabs. When you open a new tab, that will automatically copy the view settings of the active tab, if you want to use the default settings, then you have to restore the default settings from the menu or by using the keyboard shortcut.
Updated to 4.0.2
The “new folder with selection” is still slow.
In beta version 9, the speed was improved to the same speed as FL3.
However, after beta version 10, it became slow again and has not been fixed.
Please please fix this problem in the next update.
I have read the blog comments and there seems to be a lot of opinions, but I am getting comfortable with ForkLift v4 and it suits my preferences better than FL3.
Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
I don’t know if this will be fixed in the next update but we will try to fix it soon.
Thanks for the reply.
I look forward to seeing it fixed!
Is it possible to select a server name from history in the connect menu (cmd + k), like in FL3?
Unfortunately, that is not possible at the moment but adding that is on our list.
The feature “Tools now evaluate commands and parameters the same way as the Terminal” actually causes many existing command line Tools to fail. the fix is to wrap $SOURCE_SELECTION_PATHS into quotes. Otherwise it now does not work if path contains spaces… Why?) It worked fine before, why break it? Or is that a bug?
If the tool was imported and it has a space in the path, then create the tool again, it should work after that.
will do, thank you!
I tried creating a touch tool. It works only if the file name has no spaces. I can’t see how to fix it. I’ve tried both touch “$SOURCE_SELECTION_PATHS” and touch “$SOURCE_SELECTION_NAMES”
I have been in contact with the developer and there will be some changes in the next version. I have found that I have to add a shebang at the beginning and then the tools work properly with file names that have spaces. Here is a simple example of a list directory contents tool and you have enable the show output option to get the result in a separate window.
#!/bin/bash
echo -e “Directory:” $SOURCE_SELECTION_PATHS “\n”
sudo /bin/ls -Aehlp@ $SOURCE_SELECTION_PATHS | grep -i -v “^total”
Thank you, thank you. That did it. All I needed was:
#!/bin/bash
touch “$SOURCE_SELECTION_NAMES”
Now, if I could just get that tool into the contextual menu… However, a keyboard shortcut suffices for now.
I have used Automator to create Quick Actions. Chose to recieve files or folders in ForkLift. You can use AppleScript, JavaScript or Shell Script in your workflow. The Quick Actions will then be available in the Services contextual menu or in the ForkLift menu.
After you create a tool, you can set up a keyboard shortcut for it.
Overall, dear ForkLift developers, there are a few (very few so far, but this is worrying) signs of going slightly downhill with this release. I have moved to ForkLift when PathFinder released awful new version which brought nothing new really, but broke a lot of things and at the same time basically forced the users to buy a new license. The devs were extremely defensive of the changes and of the fact that the upgrade was worthwhile, as of course they have spent a lot of time working on new features – while breaking old ones used by power users. ForkLift 3 at the time (~3-4 years ago) was a saviour. So it would be very unfortunate if you went the same road, I really don’t want that to happen.
best wishes
We won’t let that happen.
My first impressions of V4 are very positive so far. Bugs I found in V3 are fixed now, several improvements I suggested are implemented. I Just upgraded to family license (you should expect extensive bug reports if I find anything 😉 Thank you very much.
Thank you
Will there be TouchBar support in FL4? Cause people having a TouchBar its getting unproductive as hell, causes just copying/moving files from one side to the other, not just clicking an icon in the TouchBar (FL3), you have to press FN, look for F5/F6 and then you are there.
ForkLift 4 won’t have touchbar support. Please customize the toolbar and add the buttons you want to use, and then click the toolbar button to execute the command.
It appears that Forklift 4 may have lost the ability to resolve hostnames in the .ssh/config file (presumably it can no longer interface with the ssh agent). Forklift 3, on the other hand, was able to read various aliases. This is a problem for us as our company uses Goteleport as the system to connect to remote machines. Can you tell me if this is a known issue and if it will be resolved? Or if there is already a way to work around the problem?
ForkLift 4 uses a different ssh agent than ForkLift 3 and unfortunately, not all things are supported in it that were supported in ForkLift 3. Please contact us in an email and let us know what is in your config file and then we will check if that is supported or can be worked around. support [at] binarynights [dot] com please use the subject: Blog Comment – SSH
Any possibility to add support for exporting or saving configuration? I am starting to customize Forklift a lot and it would be great to have this portable between machines or able to be backed up.
Something like ~/.config/forklift/userSettings.json for example.
I copied “~/Library/Preferences/com.binarynights.ForkLift.plist” to multiple machines and shared my own shortcut keys. This is a forced method and should be done at your own risk.
It would be nice to be able to sync preferences as well as “favorites” via iCloud if possible.
Yes, you can do that, nothing bad will happen if you copy that file to other Macs. We will consider the synchronization of the settings.
Farewell to the software once my favorite.
Getting the error:
“the operation cannot be completed file exists”
when trying to copy files from local drive to external drive. Have not had this issue in previous version. The same operation works fine in Finder.
Please contact us via email at support [at] binarynights [dot] com and send a screenshot or a screen recording as well.
First of all, I want to thank Forklift folks from saving us from the hell that Pathfinder became. Second, overall I find Forklift 4 an improvement over 3. Not so much for features (although that’s nice) but for crispness.
I will of course be asking for things. And have been and I find support incredibly responsive.
And when I do ask for things, whether bug fixes or features I will try not to be rudely cranky.
That all said, I want touch to be built in as a contextual menu command. Alternatively, I’d like tools to be available in the contextual menu.
Thank you for your feedback. I have added your request to our feature request list. You can create keyboard shortcuts for your tools in the settings and that way you can easily use them.
Hi I have few things what I like in Forklift 3 and now really missing them:
Sync:
– cannot confirm Sync with Enter key.
– I would like to disable hover on file with extended info
– I cannot select file / folder and disable sync with click like in v3
– I have many rules in exclude items and it is pretty long now. Please add some compact mode.
Toolbar:
– missing invisible files shortcut
Other things are really great, I like themes, speed, stability – good work. But please take a look on these things which was standard in v3. Thanks.
– You can’t start the sync with Enter because of the filters. In FL3 you could modify the filters in a pop-up and the changes were shown in the sync window after you clicked out of the pop-up. In FL4, there is no pop-up, the filters are on the top of the sync window. The filters aren’t applied on change (while you are typing) but on submit with the Enter key. If it was possible to start the sync with Enter, you wouldn’t be able to apply filters.
– The option to turn off the expanding info is on our feature request list. It is possible that we will make that available in the future.
– Deselecting items is also on our feature request list.
– I don’t understand what compact mode you mean. Is the filter section visually too big, or what is the issue exactly?
– You can modify the toolbar and add and remove items. Right click the toolbar and select Customize Toolbar, then drag the icons you want to add over the toolbar to place them. You can also drag out icons, which you don’t need. You can also replace icons if you want.
I had hoped you fixed the bug that fails login to non-AWS S3 services. For IBM Cloud it works like a champ in Forklift 3 but on 4 it fails with an error that the user is not know to AWS.
Please contact us in an email describing this issue at support [at] binarynights [dot] com. Please try to provide more info.
Hi Binarynights
When i looking to the other filemanger qspace. Have a look at their changelog.
They brings so a much new features in a month, including keyboard selection with options and so a lot more. Why you don’t willing listen to so much users requesting keyboard selection? Other develops in a month and say thank you for requesting features. Your business politics (we don’t will bring that…) is not the way when you telling “we listen to our users / comments and will bring new features to our product”. FL4 is less of stable functions to FL3 and the progress shows slow for bring a stable version. How long could your Management supporting your developers their not willing to do their job? That’s my last post here.
qspace, it has interesting characteristics, but it is China, therefore, of the communist party. If you investigate, you will confirm that they take personal information
If I want to add a tag to file, I can’t choose one of the already existing tags. I have to type in every tag-name. If I mistype that tag-name, I ‘ll create a new tag. Back in Apple Finder I see all the mistyped tags. While I can’t choose the tags in FL4 I can’t manage them in FL4 as well.
I regret buying FL4 more and more…so much bugs.
We wanted to add that feature but if I remember correctly, it wasn’t possible to access the tags dynamically, the same way as you can do that in Finder. We will take a look if a workaround can be used.
Hi,
Unfortunately there are (still) some important features not working.
1) When selected 1 upload at a time in settings the “play” button next a activity is not working. The activity don’t start. It waits until the active one is done. In Forklift 3 when you use the “play” button the activity starts right away.
2) The pause option for activities is missing. There is only a delete button. I realy need the option to pause a active copy, move, upload or download.
3) Tags are not working on remote disks and servers. I see the the existing tags but cannot change them or add new ones.
All the above features are in Forklift 3. It’s fustrating the new forklift has less features.
Can you please asap fix this?
1. Thank you for reporting this issue. We will try to fix it.
2. The individual pause buttons are missing, we will consider putting them back. You can pause all activities differently, but only those that haven’t been started yet (you can prevent them from getting started if they are already in the queue). You can do that in the Preview pane by right-clicking the Activities icon on the top. Again, we will consider allowing to pause started activities as well.
3. Please try to apply the tags and then refresh the file view with Command-R or the Refresh button/command. Do the tags show up/change?
Thank you for the answer.
2) At our company we use this feature a lot. The pause an active copy, move, upload or download option is essential to our workflow. We are sending a lot of files from one server to another. Thats one of the reasons we use Forklift 3.
I already bought a business license and would really like to update all the Macs here. So please can you do more than consider this? And enable this for Forklift 4. Thank you.
3) I have try this but the tags still don’t show up/change.
Please contact us at support [at] binarynights [dot] com regarding the issue with the tags, please also include a screen recording showing us the issue.
Firstly, thank you for a great product. I can’t imagine my daily work without the forklift.
I see that many people are frustrated because they can no longer select files with the keyboard. And I belong to these people too.
Due to the nature of my work, I often have to selectively copy certain files. I used to be able to do this without using a mouse, but now I’m forced to use a mouse.
But that’s the main idea of this file manager, isn’t it? The ability to do anything with just a keyboard.
I really hope that you will return this feature, at least make it an option in the settings. This is really very important for many users.
The “Show folder on top” option is never saved in the settings. We have to uncheck this option each time if we just want to have an alphabetical list with all the folders and files. Ashamed !
You have to enable that option in all open tabs and/or save it as the default view setting, and then restore it. Newly opened tabs don’t open with the default settings but duplicate the settings of the active tab. If you open the View Options panel and see that the “Show folders on top” setting is selected but that is not reflected in ForkLift, then please create a screen recording showing this issue. Make sure to record the whole ForkLift window, send the video at support [at] binarynights [dot] com
Hi, from the betas up to version 4.0.2(426), the Manage Tools is malfunctioning. I will detail the problem.
Selected file in ForkLift:
file_01.txt
file_02.txt
file_03.txt
Command in Tools:
open -a /Applications/MySoftware.app –args $SOURCE_SELECTION_PATHS
Result:
file_01.txt file_02.txt file_03.txt
It was expected:
file_01.txt
file_02.txt
file_03.txt
Problem:
Tools, adds SPACE character, instead of CR, to separate the files, causing MySoftware.app, cannot receive the selected files.
Repair it please, thanks.
Add a shebang at the beginning of the tools command.
#!/bin/bash
open -a /Applications/MySoftware.app –args $SOURCE_SELECTION_PATHS
Don’t forget to enable run for every selected file.
I cannot connect with SFTP, which connects via ProxyJump, but the old version(ForkLift 3) is acceptable. Can you make it work?
Unfortunately, ProxyJump is not supported in ForkLift 4 because the ssh engine used in ForkLift 4 has no support for it. We are considering bringing back the implementation from ForkLift 3 to give users more options to connect.
Honestly, the decision to drop spacebar-select is just baffling, especially since this kind of file manager is traditionally meant to be very keyboard friendly. In general (with one or two exceptions) FL3 did not require a mouse at all. The web page even says this is a feature of the product: “Keyboard Control – Control every operation straight from the keyboard and customize it to your preferences.”
Incredibly, the stated reason for dropping the feature is “developer preference”. Not “the framework doesn’t support it”, or “it would require an ugly fragile workaround and 10 years of development”, or “we did a user study and only 5 users use the feature” but just “nah, someone on our team doesn’t feel like doing it”.
I downloaded FL4 to see if there are other methods of keyboard selection, and it turns out that yes you can select items using the keyboard (with shift+arrows). Which is at least something, but does not allow you to make discontinuous selections (for instance, selecting every other file).
I think the home page needs to remove the section on “Keyboard Control – Control every operation straight from the keyboard and customize it to your preferences.” It appears that this is no longer the philosophy of the product.
I’ve been happy with Forklift 3 for many years now. And I’m happy to keep supporting the developer with paid upgrades. But unfortunately, if the philosophy of the product is moving away from complete keyboard control, then I will have to find another file manager.
x2
FL4 has no fork
how can you open a connection in terminal? currently, open in terminal works only for local tabs, not connection (SFTP) tabs.
You can’t open remote connections in Terminal in ForkLift. Enabling that is on our feature request list but not on the to-do list at the moment.
I have “Move to Trash” assigned to the “Delete”-button on my Logitech Keyboard – but it does not work – I still have to use the “Backspace” button.
If I assign another button (did try the “PageDown” button) it works.
Before the 4.0.2 update the assigned “Delete” button did work.
Can anybody verify that?
Thank you for reporting. The delete key can be assigned on an apple keyboard. We will look into this issue.
If I understand the issue correctly, you were able to assign the shortcut, so you see the Delete button icon assigned to the “Move to Trash” command in the Settings and also inside the Commands menu next to the Delete command. Is that correct? Please also check what happens when you try to use the Delete button to move an item to the Trash. Does the Commands menu in the menu bar of ForkLift flash when you press the Delete button? Do you hear a sound? If possible, please answer these questions in an email and send it at support [at] binarynights [dot] com. You can also include a screen recording demonstrating the issue.
Bugs(?):
Color labels:
Color labels all appear gray. I have a bunch of files with different color labels that appear correctly in macOS Finder windows, but in ForkLift the same file color labels are all gray.
See screenshot here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/6w95m0eflxvudagtopreq/FL4-colorlabels.jpg?rlkey=akegflgfyxmnl296v0zmzkces&dl=0
Column width:
When in list view, the width of columns NEVER sticks across restarts of Forklift or even the creation of a new window/tab. I manually have to resize the file size and date columns to show info the way I want every time. I’ve saved the View Options after adjusting, but that doesn’t seem to do anything, nor does saving a window as a Workspace
See screenshot here:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/rd6ji2fyetpy1tljko6vk/FL4-columnview.jpg?rlkey=rfljzk3vm1vc2c9nj4ihfjpbd&dl=0
Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to figure out why the tags are gray for some users. Which macOS version do you use and does this happen in all the folders or only in spcific ones, like for example the iCloud Drive?
How do you close ForkLift? Do you close all the open windows before you quit ForkLift? What is the exact process? If possible, then please send us a screen recording about how you set up the view that you would like to use in ForkLift and then how you restart the app.
Please answer the questions via email at support [at] binarynights [dot] com Please make sure that your whole ForkLift window is visible in the video.