Mass-rename conflicting files
Affected Version
- Version: 46.0- 30123aff
- Distribution: ChimeraOS
- Also affects development version: Yes
Use Cases
The "File conflict" dialogue should offer an option to "Keep both files"/rename and "Apply this action to all files and folders". The current "Select a new name for the destination" option disabled the ability to do this for all future conflicts. There should be an option to automatically do this for everything, such as appending "copy1,2,3" to conflicts.
Available Workarounds
Currently, you need to watch the full file transfer, and manually catch every conflict and manually rename each and every conflicting file name. This would require constant supervision, and is tedious and unnecessary.
Difficulties
The current workaround is MASSIVELY inefficient, and will slow down some specific workflows, where there may be hundreds of conflicting filenames, and the user wants to have multiple versions or duplicates for whatever reason.
Suggested Enhancements
The "File conflict" dialog needs a "Keep both" button, so the program will automatically increment the file, and this can be done for all future conflicts. Perhaps a new design is needed altogether.
Perhaps you could put all the buttons with the exception of "cancel" at the bottom to save space, and use an AdwStatusPage for this dialog, with "File conflict" as the title, and the current info as a subtitle and description, with a symbol that visually expresses the conflict. The "Rename" button should also probably be red to be more consistent with modern GNOME design language, as it is a very destructive, permanent operation which may result in data loss. "Keep both" should be blue and default, as it preserves both versions non-destructively, and skip is just fine.
This functionality already exists, and can be observed if you copy files and paste them in the same folder. It will append (copy). If (copy) already exists, it will append (copy2), etc. without asking. "Copy" may not be the correct terminology in the case of an arbitrary conflict, so simply incrementing with (1,2,3,etc.) may be more appropriate. There should be an easy option to just keep both files for all existing file conflicts, similar to Windows Explorer.
Additional thoughts
The current solution is kind of hidden, being in an expandable menu with small text, on a page with lots of small text. I think it would be nice if it were a more clear and concise option to rename conflicting files, and "reset" sounds confusing, so it should probably only show up if a change is actually made?
If animations were used in an AdwStatusPage layout, it would be more fun and expressive imo, and may help users better understand the different options. For instance, there could be an idle animation of two identical files bumping into one another repeatedly, with the file icon, and a generic "file.extention" name below it. When rename is pressed, there could be a quick animation of the filename changing and the conflicting file settling next to the other. If replace were clicked, one file could shred to pieces while the other settles in its place. If skip were pressed, one file could bounce backwards off-screen like it's headed back to where it came from while the other centers itself. Maybe the destination file even kicks it off-screen!
It might slow things down a tad, but it would be fun, cute, natural, and cross language barriers. Maybe a bit snazzy... If you did this, you'd want an option to disable it in the preferences, or to forgo if the global "Disable animations" option were enabled. Seeing as how this is really the only possible dialogue that shows up when copying/pasting files, I don't see it being too annoying so long as the animations only take maybe half a second. I think it would fit in design-wise with GNOME's new animations in the system Settings.