23.16 Convenience Features for Finding Files

In this section, we introduce some convenient facilities for finding recently-opened files, reading file names from a buffer, and viewing image files.

If you enable Recentf mode, with M-x recentf-mode, the ‘File’ menu includes a submenu containing a list of recently opened files. M-x recentf-save-list saves the current recent-file-list to a file, and M-x recentf-edit-list edits it.

The M-x ffap command generalizes find-file with more powerful heuristic defaults (see FFAP), often based on the text at point. Partial Completion mode offers other features extending find-file, which can be used with ffap. See Completion Options.

Visiting image files automatically selects Image mode. This major mode allows you to toggle between displaying the file as an image in the Emacs buffer, and displaying its underlying text representation, using the command C-c C-c (image-toggle-display). This works only when Emacs can display the specific image type.

Thumbs mode is a major mode for viewing directories containing many image files. To use it, type M-x thumbs and specify the directory to view. The images in that directory will be displayed in a ‘Thumbs’ buffer as thumbnails; type RET on a thumbnail to view the full-size image. Thumbs mode requires the convert program, which is part of the ImageMagick software package.