captains-deck.com ~/guides/copy-move G.02.A · 6 min read ↑ updated 2026-07-02 --:--:--
Beginner G.02.A 6 min read

F5 copies. F6 moves.

Source on the left. Destination on the right. Press one key. That’s the whole workflow — and it’s genuinely faster than anything else.

The two-pane setup

Every file operation in Captain’s Deck follows the same flow:

  1. Navigate the active pane to the source folder.
  2. Navigate the other pane to the destination folder.
  3. Select files in the active pane (Space to toggle).
  4. Press F5 to copy or F6 to move.

The destination is implicit — it’s always the inactive pane. No drag, no dialog, no surprises.

Copying files — F5

Press F5 to copy selected files from the active pane to the inactive pane.

# Workflow 1. Tab to source pane → navigate to ~/Projects/site 2. Tab to other pane → navigate to /Volumes/Backup 3. Tab back; press Space on each file to select 4. Press F5 — the copy dialog appears 5. Enter to confirm, files copy with a progress bar

The copy dialog lets you adjust the destination path before committing — useful when you want a sibling subfolder rather than the exact pane location.

Prefer to skip the prompt? Turn off “Confirm before copying files” in Settings → General (the same section has toggles for moving and deleting). The confirmations are on by default, and permanent deletes always warn regardless — see below.

Moving files — F6

F6 behaves identically to F5 but removes the source after a successful copy. On the same volume it’s instant — Captain’s Deck uses an atomic rename. Across volumes it’s a copy-then-delete with full progress.

Cross-volume moves are not atomic. If the move is interrupted, source files are kept until every byte lands. You’ll see a “cleanup pending” chip in the queue until the originals are removed.

Deleting & the Trash

Press F8 to delete the selected files. On a normal volume this moves them to the Trash, so nothing is truly gone until you empty it — and you can always bring an item back.

By default F8 asks you to confirm first. If you’d rather it just move things to the Trash, turn off “Confirm before deleting files” in Settings → General. One safeguard stays in place either way: a permanent delete — on a network share or any volume that has no Trash — always warns you before it removes anything.

Emptying the Trash

To clear it out, choose File → Empty Trash… (⇧⌘⌫), or right-click Trash in the sidebar and choose Empty Trash…. This clears the Trash on every mounted volume, not just your startup disk.

Put Back

Deleted something by mistake? Open the Trash, right-click the item, and choose Put Back — it returns to its original location. Put Back appears only while you’re browsing the Trash, and only for items that still remember where they came from.

If macOS blocks access to the Trash, Captain’s Deck offers to grant it Full Disk Access — or to open the Trash in Finder instead. Granting access lets Empty Trash and Put Back work from inside the app.

Progress & the queue

Long operations queue up in the Activity panel (Cmd+Option+A). What you can do from there:

  • Reorder the queue by dragging rows.
  • Right-click any row for Pause / Resume / Cancel. As of 1.4.4.4 the buttons drive real provider-level cancellation — pausing an SFTP or S3 transfer actually stops moving bytes, and resuming picks back up.
  • Cap copy bandwidth from Settings → General → “Throttle local copies to” (Unlimited / 1 / 5 / 10 / 50 / 100 / 250 MB/s), or per-operation from the F5/F6 dialog’s Throttle popup. The cap is re-read on every chunk so you can change it mid-transfer. Applies to local copies and S3; SFTP throttling is on the roadmap.

Captain’s Deck shows speed, ETA, and per-file progress. For directory trees it walks ahead to estimate total size before starting.

Handling conflicts

When a file with the same name exists at the destination, you get five choices:

OOverwrite — replace destination
SSkip — leave destination, drop source
RRename — append “ (2)” to source
AApply to all — repeat choice for remaining
NNewer only — overwrite if source is newer

Good to know

  • Timestamps and permissions are preserved. A copied file keeps its original modified date and its permissions (including the executable bit) — a copy is a faithful twin, not a freshly-dated file.
  • Name clashes ask first. When the destination already has a file of the same name, you get Overwrite / Skip / Rename (and "…all" variants to apply your choice to the rest of the batch).
  • Throttle the speed. Settings → General → Throttle local copies caps the bytes-per-second rate (Unlimited / 1 / 5 / 10 / 50 / 100 / 250 MB/s) — handy when a big copy is saturating a slow external drive.
  • Watch, pause, or cancel in the background. The Activity panel (Cmd+Option+A) shows transfers in progress and lets you pause, resume, or cancel without keeping the progress dialog in front.
  • Copy Name or Copy Path. Right-click a file for Copy Name (just the filename) alongside Copy Path — handy when you’re about to rename a copy or paste a reference elsewhere.
  • Open With lists the right apps. Right-click → Open With now shows the applications that can handle the file (the default listed first), not only “Other…”.

Pro tips

  • Sync panes (=) — set the inactive pane to the active pane’s path. Useful before a copy to a sibling.
  • Swap panes (Cmd+U) — swap the contents of left and right. Reverse a backup direction in one keystroke.
  • Cmd+Y — Quick Look the cursor file at any point during a workflow.
  • Cmd+Shift+R — batch rename the selected files before (or after) you copy them.
  • Drag and drop — works between panes and to other macOS apps; useful for the occasional one-off.
The orthodox layout makes copy-move visible. You always see source and destination at once. No accidental drops, no “wait, where did it go?”

Tweaks

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Motion