Altap Salamander Support Forums

Full subject (it cut off above): "After installing it, how do I make Altap Salamander actually be used when I double-click folders on my desktop in Windows 10?"

I have just installed Altap Salamander, after going increasingly insane from the unremovable "Get Help" Icon of Hell in File Explorer in Windows 10. Both the installer and the program itself feels really nice. No sleazy malware in the installer or other such things. A general feeling of not being treated like dirt, it stark contrast to how Microsoft treats me.

*However*, even after rebooting the computer, when I double-click folders or shortcuts to folders on my desktop, File Explorer still opens them, instead of Salamander. Why? Isn't it supposed to open in Salamander now? There isn't even a context menu item called "Open with Salamander", which I would assume would be a minimal change that such software would do by default.

I have gone through the entire settings and couldn't find any mention of this. I expected the installer to ask about this or inform about it in some manner, but there's not a mention anywhere in the manual or online either...

This puzzles me, to put things mildly. Right-clicking or shift-clicking the folders doesn't bring up any "Open folders with..." option, so I can't use that to set it. I also find nothing online on how to make folders open in non-File Explorer programs, and the Windows 10 "default applications" settings say nothing about folders or file exploring whatsoever.

What's the deal here? I thought Salamander was going to be treated as the default "file manager" from now on, but apparently, I'm expected to just keep it open like any normal program and switch to it when navigating files? That's... not quite what I thought it was going to be, if such is the case. I don't think or hope so... Please clarify.

Also, what does this message on the website mean? "Thanks to the merge Altap with Fine company now free of charge."
Has the product been sold to some other company recently? Does this mean that it will start adding telemetry and ads and stuff like that? (Sorry for assuming the worst, but I've seen it happen countless times in the past to previously great software...)

Hi FileExplorerRefugee

FileExplorerRefugee wrote: ↑

24 Jan 2020, 08:29

when I double-click folders or shortcuts to folders on my desktop, File Explorer still opens them, instead of Salamander. Why?

Windows is not designed to have Windows explorer replaced on that level. You could alter the default action taken, when double clicking a folder, but that messes with Open and Save file dialogs, as those are handled by explorer, as it is also the desktop, start menu, ...

FileExplorerRefugee wrote: ↑

24 Jan 2020, 08:29

There isn't even a context menu item called "Open with Salamander"

Yes, that's something that could have been added. I have never really missed that, however. I only ever start Windows explorer as a browser for my system when having the need to look at non-filesystem-folders, as most of those are not supported by Altap Salamander (there are a view plugins, but appart from this, AS shows what's in the filesystem, which might be quite different from what Windows explorer shows you (for example, Desktop lives in "My Computer" in Explorer, but in Salamander, some, but possibly not all of it's content lives at C:\Users\<something probably related to your user name>\Desktop and C:\Users\Public\Desktop. The latter folder can be found in the explorer also (kind of a partial copy of the Desktop). On my German Windows it is called "Dieser PC/(C:) Windows/Benutzer/Öffentlich/Desktop" in Explorer.)
Salamander is a two pane file manager, so, if you want to tell Salamander to open a folder from the outside, you ought to tell it also, on which side. Additionally, most users of Salamander will probably not want to open a new instance, but reuse an already running one. So, I guess, most users of Salamander will navigate the system using Salamander to begin with. If you doubleclick a folder, or even a link to a folder, in Salamander, it will open in Salamander.

So, at the bottom line, a dual pane file manager is not an in-place replacement for Windows Explorer. It is an entirely different way of working with file systems.

FileExplorerRefugee wrote: ↑

24 Jan 2020, 08:29

I thought Salamander was going to be treated as the default "file manager" from now on, but apparently, I'm expected to just keep it open like any normal program and switch to it when navigating files? That's... not quite what I thought it was going to be, if such is the case. I don't think or hope so... Please clarify.

Yes, that's exactly how you work with Salamander. You switch to an instance that is already running, or start a new instance, whenever you need to navigate the file system (except in those Open and Save dialogs. You are basically stuck with those.).
I don't know how you do things, but that's exactly how I work even on systems on which I have no chance of bringing my Salamander along (I often work on computers not owned by me). But this way of working might, of course be due to having avoided explorer ever since it replaced the old dual pane windows file manager in Windows 95.

FileExplorerRefugee wrote: ↑

24 Jan 2020, 08:29

Also, what does this message on the website mean? "Thanks to the merge Altap with Fine company now free of charge."
Has the product been sold to some other company recently? Does this mean that it will start adding telemetry and ads and stuff like that? (Sorry for assuming the worst, but I've seen it happen countless times in the past to previously great software...)

The company (Altap) has been bought. The product Altap Salamander has kindly been made freeware, but it will not be developed further. As I understand it, this does not mean there will definitely be no updated version ever, but no big advances will likely be made. If you look around this forum you will easily find the most requested missing features.
As there are no updated versions to be expected anyway, even if telemetry was added in some future version, you'd loose nothing. Just keep using the old one. Unlike Microsoft with Windows 10, no-one forces you to update your Altap Salamander. (In fact, on some systems I still use Altap Salamander 1.52, because this was available as a free version before 4.0. It's dated May 1998.)

So, if you want to launch Salamander from the context menu of a drive or directory, you need to modify the registry. Copy the following into a file. save it preferably in UTF-16LE encoding with a .reg extension. Then register it using the context menu. This registers it for the current user only. If you want to register it for all users, replace HKEY_CURRENT_USER with HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE everywhere within the file. The "Open in &Salamander"-string is what is displayed in the context menu. The '&' is not displayed, but instead the following character is the accelerator key (the character that is underlined and whose corresponding key, possibly combined with the Alt-key may be used to select or execute the item. E.g. on my system, after having selected a folder, I can press Shift+F10 in order to display the context menu, then press S to launch Salamander).
You may have to adjust the path to the salamand.exe executable. Also you may want to tweak the options passed to salamand.exe. Check out the topic "Starting Altap Salamander with Parameters" in the help file. %V is a windows thing. It is replaced by the root folder of the drive or the full path of the directory. The parameters, as given, load the folder into the left panel (-L) and activates the left panel (-P 1) It uses an existing instance or a new one depending on your default setting for "Allow only one instance of Salamander at one time".

Hope that helps.

And, if things are unfamiliar, don't despair. It will be worth the learning effort. Explore the different ways to do things, and explore the configuraion options, in order to tailor your salamander to your needs.