The file viewer Added in 0.9.9

The file viewer shows one file at a time over the whole screen. It opens when you click a file in 📁 Browse files, a file name an agent wrote in its reply, or a picture, video or audio attachment in the conversation. You can read the file, play it, zoom into it, save it and, for pictures, mark it up.

Pictures, video and audio sit on black. Text sits in a column that stays readable on a wide screen. The title, the buttons and a line with the file's kind and size float over the content. A tap or click on the content hides them and brings them back. While a video or an audio file plays they also fade after three seconds, and moving the mouse or touching a button brings them back. A paused player always shows them.

What each kind looks like #

The relay decides the kind from the file's ending and, for text, from a look at its first bytes.

The line over the content reads like CODE · javascript · 4.2 KB: the kind, the language where there is one, and the size.

Text buttons #

For Markdown, code and text files from the workspace, the drives or the session folder, the toolbar has Preview and Raw. Preview is the rendered or highlighted view, Raw is the plain text.

A Markdown file opens with its layout HTML switched on, and a line says ⚠ Safe layout HTML enabled; active content is blocked. Show literal HTML turns that off, so HTML in the file appears as text, and Show HTML layout turns it back on. Scripts never run either way.

A relative link inside a rendered Markdown file opens the linked file in the same viewer, and a ← Back button appears in the toolbar to return to the file before. A link to a web address opens in a new tab. A file opened this way has no neighbours to swipe to.

Large and binary files #

• Large text. The viewer reads the first 512 KB of a text file. For a longer file the line over the content adds truncated to 512 KB. The rest is not shown; Download gives the whole file.
• Binary content. A file that looks like text by its ending but whose bytes are binary (or that the relay serves as a binary type) is shown as the "no inline preview" card.
• Images, video, audio. No size limit applies to them in the viewer.
• A file that cannot be read. The viewer shows Preview failed with the error, for example File not found.

Moving between files #

Whether you can move on from the open file depends on how you opened it.

A folder with a single file, or a conversation with a single picture, opens without a gallery. When there is one, two buttons (‹ and ›) and the position (for example 3 / 12) appear at the bottom. The gallery does not wrap: the buttons are disabled at both ends. The neighbours on both sides are fetched ahead, so a step lands on the file instead of on Fetching file preview….

A file in a conversation that is not a picture, video or audio (a PDF, say) is a normal link below the message and opens in a new browser tab, not in the viewer.

Closing it #

• Swipe down on a picture, a player or a card. The content follows your finger and goes if you swipe far or fast enough. Text scrolls under your finger instead.
• Swipe sideways to step through the gallery. Mouse drags do not swipe, so they can still select text; a zoomed-in picture pans instead of swiping.
• × in the top right corner, or Esc.
• Back on a phone, see below.

Zoom and pan #

A picture is shown at its fitted size at first and never smaller than that. Fitted, a sideways swipe moves to the next file and a swipe down closes the viewer. Zoomed in, those drags pan the picture instead.

Back on a phone and in the installed app #

While the viewer is open, the system back gesture or back button closes the viewer and nothing else. The address in the browser does not change.

In the app installed from the browser (Android, iOS or desktop), Back never closes the app by itself. With nothing left to close, it shows Press back again to close the app, and a second press closes it. Before you have touched the page once, the browser lets Back leave, which a page cannot change. In an ordinary browser tab the back button is the browser's as usual.

Actions #

Click the title at the top to copy the file's reference, such as `@file:src/app.js`, which you can paste into the composer so that the agent reads that file. The title's tooltip shows the exact text. For a file from the drives or the session folder, the reference carries the absolute path.

Where a link in a reply leads #

• A file name or path in plain text, such as src/app.js, with an ending of a known file type, is a link that opens the file in the viewer. It is always read as a path inside the conversation's workspace. An absolute path is cut back to the part inside the workspace. An absolute path that is not in the workspace, such as /var/log/app.log, becomes a workspace path too and fails with File not found. Names inside code spans and code blocks are not turned into links.
• A picture the agent embedded by its absolute path opens in the viewer with the conversation's other media. This works for files outside the workspace as well. See Media in an agent's reply.
• A Markdown link to a file path opens the raw file in a new browser tab, not in the viewer, and so does one to a web address. The same path written as plain text opens in the viewer.

What the viewer can open #

The viewer asks the relay for the file, so the relay decides.

A path that names a folder, or a file that is gone, is refused. HTML and XML files are shown as text and an SVG cannot run script, so a file written by an agent never runs as a page on the relay. A shared read-only link cannot fetch workspace or drive files, and a click on an embedded picture does nothing there.

Keys #

The arrow keys work only when there is a gallery, and not while you type in a field.