The Details panel

The Details panel lists the properties of the file you have selected — size, dates, camera, length, author and many more. Where you are choosing between files, it lists every one of them, one column per file, so you can see how they differ before you keep one and discard the other.

Showing and hiding it

Choose Details under Panels in the ribbon for your current Explore or Similar view. This shows or hides the panel without leaving the results or comparison you have open. The panel sits on the right, above the status bar. Drag its left edge to make it wider or narrower.

Whether the panel is open is one setting for the whole app, and it starts open. Closing it on one tab closes it everywhere, and it stays that way next time. The width is remembered too. The panel is never shown in full screen.

What it shows

Screen Columns
Files, Duplicates and Largest The file you have selected, one column
Similar → Images, Videos and Documents, with no compare view open The file you have selected, one column
The compare view on Images, Videos and Documents The two files in the previewer, A then B, however many are in the group
Similar → Audio The first four tracks in the selected group, in list order
Review (from the Files tab) The files you have ticked to show, in the order they are shown
Folder sizes The folder you have selected, one column. With none selected, the folder the list or chart is showing

The panel never shows more than four files. The compare views show only the two in the previewer, so choosing another challenger changes the second column. Audio shows the first four tracks of the group.

The panel follows the file you clicked or moved to with the arrow keys, not the files you have ticked. Ticking a file doesn't change it. With no file selected, the panel says "Select a file to see its properties"; on Folder sizes it says "Select a folder to see its details". A date of 1 January 1980 is left blank, as it is in Windows Explorer: it is the date a file system stores when none was ever set.

On the compare views a file's column is headed A or B before its name. Switch A and B swaps the two columns; the panel does not read the files again.

Reading the panel

Property is the first column and stays put when you scroll sideways. Drag the edge of its heading to make it wider or narrower. Each file has a column beside it. A group with more files than fit scrolls sideways.

Properties are grouped under headings: Summary, People, Camera and lens, Exposure, Location, Media, Document and File. A folder has its own two: Folder, and File types, which lists the folder's size by type with its share of the folder, biggest first and Other last. Click a heading to fold or unfold its rows. A property appears if any of the files has it. A file that doesn't has a dash in that row, faded.

When the files disagree about a property, the row is shown in bold. A missing value counts as a value, so a dash beside a real value is a difference. Trawler never marks one file as the better one. Where two values differ but would read the same, such as two sizes that both round to 20.0 MB, the row shows the exact figure instead: the size in bytes, or the time with seconds.

Click a row to select it. The strip along the bottom then shows the property's full name, where the value was read from (for example EXIF 0xA430), and the whole value, which is trimmed in the cell when it is long.

The toolbar

Control What it does
Filter properties Keeps the rows whose name, or any file's value, contains what you type.
Categorized / A–Z Groups the rows under headings, or lists them in one alphabetical run.
Differences only Hides every row where the files agree. With fewer than two files shown there is nothing to compare, so the switch is hidden and every row shows.

Categorized or A–Z, Differences only, which headings you folded and the width of the Property column are remembered for next time. What you typed in Filter properties is not.

Copying

Right-click a row and choose Copy value, which copies the selected file's value, or Copy row, which copies the property's name followed by every file's value, separated by tabs. Ctrl+C does the same as Copy value. In the filter box and in the bottom strip it copies your text selection instead.

When a column doesn't show values

Each file loads on its own, so a slow file doesn't hold up the others. Until its answer arrives the column reads "Loading…" under the file's name. A column that could not be read says why under the name:

Under the name What it means
No metadata The file has nothing to read beyond the basics, or Trawler doesn't read properties for that type.
Unavailable Trawler could not reach or read the file.
Password-protected The file needs a password, so its properties can't be read.
Unreadable The file was found, but Trawler could not read its contents.
FFmpeg required A video Trawler can only read with FFmpeg, and it can't find FFmpeg. MP4, MOV, M4V, AVI, WMV, MKV and WebM files show their main properties without it; FFmpeg adds the rest. It needs both ffmpeg.exe and ffprobe.exe; see FFmpeg location.
Cloud file, not downloaded The file is a placeholder in OneDrive, Google Drive or Dropbox. See below.

Name, folder, size, type and dates still show for these, because Trawler already has them from the scan, and they still count as differences. The properties that would have been read from inside the file are left out of Differences only, so one unreadable file doesn't make every row look different.

Cloud-only files

A cloud placeholder is not read unless Settings → Scanning & performance → Include cloud-only files by default is on. That setting reads "Scan files stored only in the cloud (OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox). Reading them downloads their content during the scan." It applies here too. With it off, the column says Cloud file, not downloaded and nothing is downloaded.

When the files are read

Trawler reads the files when the panel is shown, not while it is hidden. Open the panel and it reads the files on screen. Select another file or move to another group and it reads those. Close it and nothing more is read, which matters on a slow disk or a network location.

For CSV and other delimited text, Maximum column lengths (characters) lists each column number and its longest decoded value. Headers count. Quotes used to enclose or escape CSV values do not count. Reading these properties scans the whole file; changing the selection cancels that request.