FAQ
This page collects the questions that come up most often about downloading and installing, everyday use, updates, and support. For full steps, follow the links.
Download & install
Are the download links in these docs the latest version?
Yes. All four links on Install & download point at download.tessoa.com/tessoa/latest/, which always serves the current release.
Do I have to install it after downloading?
Not strictly, but installing is recommended. Double-clicking tessoa.exe works; after installing you start tessoa from the Start Menu instead of looking for that file again each time. The desktop shortcut and right-click entries also need it. See Install & download.
"Windows protected your PC" appeared. Now what?
Click More info → Run anyway. Windows often shows this for newly released versions. Anything downloaded from the links on Install & download is safe to run.
Does Windows need administrator rights?
No. It installs for your account only.
Nothing appears when I double-click. Now what?
Open Task Manager and look for a tessoa.exe process:
- There is a process but no window: at the 24-second mark, tessoa on Windows puts up a dialog naming the startup stage it stopped at and where the diagnostic log is (
%APPDATA%\tessoa\exit.log). The stuck process holds the "only one at a time" seat, so every double-click after that is handed to it and nothing appears on screen — end it in Task Manager before trying again. Attach that log file to a report; it records which step it stopped at. - There is no process either: most likely a DLL left by other software in the folder holding the exe, with a browser's download folder the usual suspect. From v0.18.1 on, tessoa looks for DLLs in the system folder only and this cannot happen; on earlier versions, moving
tessoa.exeto another folder — or installing it and starting from the Start Menu — works around it.
Is "Replace File Explorer" safe? Can I undo it?
It is an experimental feature. With it on, double-clicking a folder or a drive and pressing Win+E all open tessoa. Turn the toggle off on the install page, or uninstall tessoa, and everything goes back to normal; Explorer windows that are already open are unaffected. See Install & download: System integration.
Everyday use
Does closing the last tab quit the app?
No, you go back to the Start Page. To quit, use the window close button or the quit shortcut.
Does tessoa keep running in the background after I close the window?
Not by default — closing the last window quits. On Windows you can change that: turn on Keep running in the background on close in the Maintenance group in Settings, and closing the last window puts tessoa in the system tray instead, so opening it again is instant and skips the whole startup. Right-clicking the tray icon offers Show and Quit. See Settings overview.
Why are my tabs still there after a restart?
That is on purpose. When you quit normally, tessoa remembers the tabs, splits, and folders you had open and brings them back next time. If a folder has since been deleted, that tab tells you the location can no longer be found.
Can I change the keyboard shortcuts?
Yes. Open Settings and choose Keyboard Shortcuts. The mouse's left, right, middle and side buttons and three wheel gestures are changed on the same page. Vim mode's keys are on the Vim Keys page next to it. See Keyboard shortcuts and Changing the Vim keys.
Will my settings be lost?
Theme, language, shortcuts, zoom, and similar preferences are kept for good.
Which folders you had open is recorded when you quit normally. If the app crashes or is force-quit, that last session may not have been saved, and you get the state from the previous normal quit instead. Tags and layouts are saved as you go and are generally unaffected.
What is the difference between layouts and "restore last session"?
| What it is | When it happens | |
|---|---|---|
| Restore last session | Reopening the app puts everything back the way you left it | Automatically, every launch |
| Layouts | Several named working scenes you switch between | When you click a layout in the sidebar |
See Layouts & workspaces.
Are tags stored inside the files?
No, tessoa keeps them in an index of its own, with no NTFS alternate data streams and no change to file modification times. So if you move or delete files from another program such as File Explorer, a tag can end up pointing at a file that is no longer there. Run Clean Up Stale Tag References in Settings to tidy that up. See Tags: where tags are stored.
Which folder holds my tags and settings, and how do I back them up?
%APPDATA%\tessoa\ on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/tessoa/ on macOS, and ~/.config/tessoa/ on Linux. Tags live in tags.ini and preferences in config.ini, both plain text. To back them up, quit tessoa and copy the whole folder.
Running without installing — double-clicking tessoa.exe where it landed — uses that same folder, so the data does not travel with that file. Copy it to a USB stick, run it on another computer, and your tags stay behind. See Tags: backing up and migrating tags.
Where is the refresh key?
F5 (⌘+R on macOS). You will rarely need it, though: tessoa watches the folders you have open, so when another program creates, deletes, or renames something in one of them, the list follows along on its own. Network locations give no such notifications, so they are re-scanned on a timer instead and catch up a few seconds later — the manual key is the way out for places like that. Folder sizes already worked out are not recomputed by a refresh.
Where do deleted files go, and how do I get them back?
Into the system's own recycle bin (the Recycle Bin on Windows, the Trash on macOS and Linux) — the same place they land when you delete them in Explorer. Right after deleting, Ctrl+Z puts them back. If you only think of it later, find the entry in Activity and click Undo.
Shift+Delete is a permanent delete: it skips the recycle bin and cannot be undone, so it asks you to confirm first. See File operations.
On Windows and macOS, select the sidebar's Places page and click Recycle Bin to view the system Recycle Bin or Trash inside tessoa. The context menu offers Restore, Delete permanently and Empty Recycle Bin. On macOS, items without original-location information cannot be restored here; restricted access to the home-folder Trash requires Full Disk Access in System Settings. See Recycle Bin.
What should I do when a file operation says "permission denied"?
In a normal Windows window, a copy, move, deletion, new folder or undo that fails entirely because permission was denied can offer Retry as administrator on its toast. Click it and approve the system prompt to retry the original batch in the current window. A partially successful batch does not offer a retry of the whole batch; check which items remain unfinished first.
To enter a protected folder or work through several batches, choose Open New Window as Administrator from the top-left menu. Its title includes Administrator, and settings and session changes made there are not saved. macOS and Linux do not offer these two entry points; see Administrator operations.
How do I find out where I pasted that batch of files?
A batch you dragged over is already checked and scrolled into view when the move finishes, see Where things landed. A Ctrl+V paste does not do that yet: press Ctrl+Shift+H, or click the clock button in the top-right corner of the window, to open Activity. Every copy, move, delete and rename is recorded there. Each entry can Go to that folder with the files selected, and most can be undone. 200 entries are kept by default; change that in the Notifications settings group, or turn it off entirely.
Text looks fuzzy, or the letter spacing is uneven. What can I do?
Open Settings → Appearance → the Appearance page. The last few entries are exactly for this: Subpixel Positioning fixes uneven spacing (it is on by default), Text Gamma adjusts how heavy strokes come out, and LCD Subpixel Antialiasing sharpens edges on low-resolution displays. That last one is off by default because it produces colour fringing on OLED panels and on displays turned on their side — try it and see. Details in Settings overview.
If the problem is that Latin and CJK text on the same line have visibly different weights, that is the font: on the same page, set Font to a CJK typeface that ships its own Latin glyphs (Microsoft YaHei, for instance) so both come from one family.
There is a new strip at the top of the window. What is it, and how do I turn it off?
That is the quick bar, added in 0.23 and on by default: buttons such as Copy and Paste on the left, your bookmarks on the right. To turn it off, open the Appearance group in Settings, go to the Quick Bar page and set Show as to Off; right-clicking blank space on the strip and choosing Customize quick bar… goes to the same page. To drop only one half, that page also carries the Show quick buttons and Show favorites switches. See Quick bar.
The order of my files changed after upgrading. Why?
Since 0.23, Chinese names sort as one block after English, so the order within a folder runs digits → English → Chinese, matching File Explorer and Finder. Chinese used to be spread through the alphabet by pinyin one position at a time, so 阿里巴巴 sat next to apple. There is no switch for this. See View modes.
After unplugging my external monitor everything looks small and thin. Why?
Since 0.23 it does not. UI scale is recorded per screen, and a screen you never adjusted follows its own system scale, so changing screens, unplugging a monitor or moving to another machine adapts by itself. If you did adjust this screen by hand and want to hand it back to the system, click Reset to screen default below UI Scale in the General group in Settings. That row only appears on a screen you have adjusted. See Settings reference.
How do I split the window?
Drag a tab to the edge of the window and release. See Tabs & split panes.
Can I preview two files at once?
Yes, with a preview tab. Right-click any preview surface → New preview tab from here, pick where it should land, and you get a tab that shows nothing but a preview. Open two of them, Pin current file on one and let the other follow your clicks, and you can compare the two files side by side.
Can I preview video and audio?
With a preview plugin installed, yes: video and audio files get cover art, clicking the ▶ in the middle of it plays them inside preview, and a playback bar appears below. Plugins install from the Preview plugins page in the Maintenance group in Settings, or from a .zip file. This is a Supporter-tier paid feature. See Preview plugins.
Can I turn pages in Word documents and presentations?
Yes, with a preview plugin that supports page navigation. For example, tessoa-office 0.2.0 or later with tessoa 0.24.0 or later can preview the pages of .docx and .pptx files. Click the page number to jump, scroll the wheel to turn pages, or choose Single page, Continuous scroll or Two-page. A spinner appears if loading takes a moment; see Preview plugins: multipage documents.
Can I open a folder in a new tab?
Yes. Right-click the folder → Open in New Tab, or just middle-click it; from the keyboard it is Ctrl+Enter. Sidebar folder rows, breadcrumb segments, and the back and forward buttons all take a middle-click too. New tabs open in the background by default, and a small dot on the tab reminds you that you have not looked at it yet. See Open in a new tab.
Can a single click enter a folder instead of two?
Yes. Turn on Single-Click to Open Folders in the Input group in Settings. It only affects folders; files still need a double-click. See Settings overview.
Why do some folders say "Not calculated" instead of a size?
Totalling a folder's size means reading every file underneath it, which is slow on hard disks, USB sticks, and network locations, so automatic scanning can be turned off. Windows draws finer lines: it decides per storage medium whether to scan automatically, and never scans volumes whose medium it cannot determine (virtual disks and the like). macOS and Linux have a single master switch — with it on, everything is scanned.
Click that cell and it scans just that one folder, whatever the switches say. To choose which media are scanned automatically, see Settings overview.
Can I add an interface language?
Yes, without waiting for a release. Click Export Language Template in the Maintenance group in Settings, translate the file, name it after the language tag, and put it back in the same folder. Restart and it appears in the language list. See Settings overview.
Can tessoa compress or extract files?
Extract yes, compress not yet. Right-click an archive and the menu offers Extract Here, Extract to Subfolder and Extract to…; encrypted archives ask for a password first, and .rar is handed to 7-Zip or WinRAR on your machine. See Extracting archives.
Without extracting, you can also browse an archive like a folder and preview the files inside it, though nothing inside can be modified — see Browsing archives. Packing files into an archive is not supported yet.
Can I browse my phone in tessoa when it is plugged in?
Yes, on Windows. Unlock the phone and pick "File transfer" on it, and a row appears both in the sidebar's Storage section and in This PC. For now it is browse-only, with no changes allowed, and files cannot be copied off it yet; that step still needs File Explorer. See Storage locations.
Is there a way to work entirely from the keyboard?
Yes. Turn on Vim Mode (j/k navigation) in the Input group in Settings; after that j/k move, l enters a folder, y copies, and the sidebar has its own set of keys. See Vim mode.
How much memory does tessoa use?
The Memory column, the one Task Manager shows the moment it opens, reads about 100 MB on a test machine with a discrete graphics card, one window open, sitting in an ordinary folder. That column answers "how much do I get back by closing tessoa", which is what you usually want to know.
The Details tab can add a Commit size column, and on the same machine that one reads around 200 MB. The two figures do not contradict each other; they answer different questions:
| Task Manager column | What it is | On that machine |
|---|---|---|
| Memory (the default column on the Processes tab, also called the private working set) | The part that really occupies your RAM and belongs to tessoa alone | around 100 MB |
| Commit size (add it on the Details tab) | What tessoa has reserved from the system, part of which has not been used yet | around 200 MB |
One way to read "reserved": a table is booked for ten and four people are sitting at it. The system holds the seats, and the empty ones are not taking up your RAM. Microsoft's official definitions of the two terms are the working set and the commit charge; both pages are written for developers.
Your own numbers will differ, mostly for three reasons:
- Whether the graphics is integrated or discrete. Integrated graphics has no memory of its own, so thumbnails and preview textures come out of system memory and are counted against tessoa; on a discrete card the same textures live in video memory, where Task Manager's process list does not see them. The same build on a different card can differ by hundreds of megabytes.
- How large the folders you open are. Each tab holds its own file list. On the same test machine, opening a folder of a hundred thousand files raised the commit size about 60 MB above idle.
- How many previews and thumbnails you have looked at. That part has a budget, and the budget is yours to set — see the next question.
Why does memory climb the longer I work?
What you just looked at is kept on purpose: click back to the same file and it appears at once, without being decoded again. How much is kept has a budget, and once usage reaches that budget tessoa drops the oldest entries, so it does not climb forever.
The budget lives in the Display & Performance group in Settings, under Preview cache: Save memory, Balanced (the default), Performance, plus Custom for setting the Preview VRAM Budget and Text Cache Budget sliders yourself. Turning it down takes effect immediately, with no restart, and whatever is already cached is dropped to fit the new budget.
There is one exception: whatever is on screen right now is always kept. If the budget is smaller than the picture currently on screen, usage goes over budget. That is deliberate — otherwise the display would keep reloading itself while you look at it. To save memory, pick Save memory rather than dragging a slider down to a tiny value. See Preview: how much memory previews use.
How do I see tessoa's own memory figures?
Open Settings and turn on Show Memory Usage in the Display & Performance group. A small readout appears in the bottom-left corner of the window, listing Preview VRAM and Text Cache as "used / budget" line by line; on Windows and Linux a Process total follows, with the counter it comes from in parentheses. Keep it on screen while you adjust the budgets.
To see what a change to Preview cache did, read this readout rather than Task Manager. Task Manager counts the whole process, with the window itself, the fonts and icons, and the buffers the graphics driver hands out all included, so it is bound to be larger than these two caches. The "Dedicated GPU memory" column is stranger still: it records the most the graphics driver ever handed out, and it does not necessarily drop when tessoa releases a texture, so it can barely move after you lower the budget.
How do I make tessoa use less?
- Open Settings and set Preview cache to Save memory in the Display & Performance group. This is the most direct one.
- Close windows you are not using. Each window carries its own text cache and drawing buffers, so every extra one costs a full set; an extra tab costs far less, only another file list.
- Do not leave a tab sitting in a folder of a hundred thousand files. The file list belongs to the tab, and it is released once you leave that folder.
Why do some older file managers have more features yet use less memory?
The difference is mostly not about feature count but about who draws the interface: the memory goes into the picture and the caches, and has little to do with how many features a program has.
File Explorer and most long-established file managers ask Windows to draw for them: lists, text and icons are rendered by the system's UI components, and that drawing machinery lives in system components shared by every program, so Task Manager does not count it against any one of them. tessoa draws its own interface, every glyph and every frame, on the graphics card: the window's frame buffers, the text and icon atlases, and the preview textures are all held by tessoa itself, and every one of them is counted against tessoa's process.
So the two numbers are not measured on the same basis: for the same job of putting an interface on screen, an older program's share is booked to the system and split across every program, while tessoa's share lands entirely on its own account. Drawing your own interface does also cost some real extra memory — the bigger the window, the bigger the frame buffers — and what it buys is a folder of a hundred thousand files that scrolls smoothly, and previews that come back instantly when you open them again.
On integrated graphics the gap is more visible: every texture the picture uses comes out of system memory and is counted against tessoa — see How much memory does tessoa use? above. For ways to bring the number down, see How do I make tessoa use less?.
Updates & support
How do I check for updates?
All three platforms have Check for Updates in the About settings group, right under the version number. By default tessoa checks once a day on its own and installs whatever it finds in the background — without interrupting you, so the next time you start it you are on the new version. When the install is done you get Updated to vX.Y.Z — restart to apply; click Restart Now on it to switch over immediately. The standing line at the bottom left of Settings reads either Update: vX.Y.Z or Ready: vX.Y.Z, and clicking it starts the update or restarts. To stop it installing on its own, turn off Auto-install Updates (applies on restart). You can also just download over your copy using the links in Install & download.
What does tessoa send over the network?
Two things, each with its own switch in the About settings group. Auto-check for Updates (daily) asks once a day whether a newer version exists. Send Anonymous Usage Statistics sends at most one report a day, containing a random installation number, the version, whether this is a beta build, the operating system and its version, the CPU architecture and the interface language — no paths, no file names, no user name, no license key, and nothing about what you opened. Neither happens before you accept the Terms & Privacy Policy, and machines with DO_NOT_TRACK set send no statistics at all. See Settings: About.
Where are the docs?
Click Documentation in the About group in Settings and this site opens in your default browser.
Where do I report a problem or send a suggestion?
- GitHub: open an issue in tessoa/feedback. Everything there is public, so you can follow the reply and what happens next, and read what others have already reported. Requires a GitHub account
- In the app: click Beta Feedback in the About group in Settings to open the feedback form in your browser (beta builds only)
- Support: [email protected]
- Community: [email protected]
Where to go next
| Goal | Page |
|---|---|
| Install or update | Install & download |
| Your first five minutes | Quick start |
| What the parts are called | Interface tour |
| Everyday file actions | File operations |
| Switching between scenes | Layouts & workspaces |
| Keeping the folders you go to often | Bookmarks |
| Looking back at what you did | Activity |
| Extracting an archive | Extracting archives |
| USB sticks / WSL / phones | Storage locations |
| Look up a setting | Settings overview |
Administrator operations · Recycle Bin · Preview plugins · Settings overview