F5 copies. F6 moves.

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.

The confirmation shows the destination folder and the total size; press Enter to go ahead. The files always land in the other pane’s current folder. To give a single item a different name on the way, use File → Copy to Other Pane As… (or Move to Other Pane As…).

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.

Moves to and from servers only delete what arrived. When you move files between your Mac and a server, or between two servers, each original is removed only after that file is confirmed at the destination. Anything that didn’t make it stays where it was, and Captain’s Deck tells you which items those are.

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. It works for items you deleted in Finder or another app too, not only ones Captain’s Deck deleted — as long as macOS recorded where they came from.

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. Pause stops a local, SFTP or FTP copy immediately — in the middle of a file, not at the next one — and Resume carries on from where it stopped. While a copy is paused, its progress window says Paused and its clock stops.
• Run copies one after another. Settings → Transfers → Max. simultaneous transfers sets how many copies and moves run at once (Unlimited by default, or 1–10). The rest wait as Queued in the Activity panel, and you can cancel them while they wait. Moves within the same disk are instant renames, so they never wait.
• Cap copy bandwidth. Settings → General → “Throttle local copies to” sets the limit for copies between local folders (Unlimited / 1 / 5 / 10 / 50 / 100 / 250 MB/s). Settings → Transfers has separate Limit uploads to and Limit downloads to settings for servers and network shares.
• Change the speed mid-copy. The Throttle popup in the progress window overrides those limits for that one operation. You can change it while the copy runs.

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

Quitting mid-copy asks first. If you quit while a copy, move or other file operation is still running, Captain’s Deck asks whether to Keep Running or Quit and Stop. Quit and Stop cancels the operations and cleans up any partly copied file — or keeps it to resume later, if Resume interrupted transfers is on in Settings → Transfers.

Handling conflicts

When an item with the same name exists at the destination, the File Already Exists (or Folder Already Exists) dialog shows both versions with their size and date. Every button answers to one key — the underlined letter:

Return still means Overwrite and Esc still means Cancel. “Apply to all” works with Overwrite, Skip and Rename for files and folders alike; with Overwrite if Newer it covers the remaining files, and with Merge the remaining folders.

Merging folders

Merge adds the new items to the existing folder. Subfolders with the same name are merged too. Files with the same name follow your file choice — you’re asked, or your default from Settings applies. Nothing already in the folder is removed. When you move a folder this way, the original folder is removed only if everything left it.

Set a default

Tired of answering the same question? Settings → Transfers → When an Item Already Exists has two popups:

• When a file already exists: Ask, Replace, Replace if newer, Skip, or Keep both (rename).
• When a folder already exists: Ask, Merge, Replace, Skip, or Keep both (rename).

Ask is the default and shows the dialog above. Any other choice is applied without asking. If items were skipped that way, the status bar tells you afterwards — for example, “Skipped 3 existing items”.

Overwrite never deletes first. Captain’s Deck copies the new version alongside and swaps it in only once it’s complete, so a failed or cancelled copy leaves your original untouched. Overwriting a folder on a server merges into it rather than deleting it first.

Cancel means cancel. Clicking Cancel in the “already exists” dialog stops the whole copy or move — nothing else is processed.

Interruptions & retries

Resume interrupted transfers

Turn on Resume interrupted transfers in Settings → Transfers and a large copy that stops halfway doesn’t start over. What was already copied is kept as name.cdpart. Press Retry, or copy the same file again later, and Captain’s Deck carries on from where it stopped. This works between folders on your Mac, mounted shares, SFTP servers and S3. On a server the partial file sits next to the destination as name.cdpart until the copy finishes. On S3 the parts already uploaded wait out of sight; ones that are never finished are cleared after 7 days so they don’t keep costing storage.

• It’s off by default. With it off, a failed or cancelled copy removes its partial file.
• It applies to files of 8 MB or more, copied between local folders or mounted network shares. Smaller files simply copy again.
• It’s used when the file is new at the destination. Replacing an existing file keeps the usual safe swap, so your original stays intact until the copy is done.

Automatic retry

Turn on Automatically retry failed transfers in Settings → Transfers, and brief network drops, timeouts and disk hiccups are retried before you see an error. Captain’s Deck waits a little longer each time — 1, 2, 4, then 8 seconds — and the progress window shows “Retrying…” with the attempt number. Max retries per item sets how many tries it gets (3 by default, up to 10).

Problems that would only fail again — no permission, a missing file, a full disk, a cancelled copy — are never retried.

Permission Denied

When you don’t have permission to copy, move or delete an item, the Permission Denied dialog offers three choices:

• Use Admin — try again with administrator rights. You’ll be asked for your password.
• Retry — fix the problem yourself first (for example, unlock the folder), then try again without administrator rights.
• Skip — leave this item and carry on with the rest.

More ways to copy

These live in the File menu, and most are also in the right-click menu.

• Duplicate (Cmd+Shift+D) — copies the selection into the same folder, named the way Finder does it: “name copy”, then “name copy 2”.
• New Folder with Selection… (Ctrl+Cmd+N) — asks for a name and moves the selected items into a new folder. A single Undo puts them back and removes the folder.
• Copy to Other Pane As… and Move to Other Pane As… — select one item, type a new name, and it lands in the other pane under that name. No rename afterwards.
• Make Alias — creates a Finder alias next to the item (“name alias”). An alias keeps working if the original moves.
• Make Symlink — creates a symbolic link next to the item (“name symlink”).
• Make Symlink in Other Pane — puts the link straight into the other pane’s folder, under the item’s own name.

Duplicate, New Folder with Selection, Make Alias and the symlink commands work on your Mac’s own disks. Copy and Move As work wherever a normal copy does, servers included. The Edit menu’s Undo names what it will undo, such as “Undo Duplicate”. Undoing a copy moves the copies to the Trash rather than deleting them, so a copy you’d already edited can still be fished back out.

Create Archive

Choose File → Create Archive… (Cmd+Shift+A) to pack the selection into one file. Pick:

• Format — ZIP (.zip), Gzipped Tar (.tar.gz), Bzip2 Tar (.tar.bz2), Tar (.tar), or 7-Zip (.7z) when 7-Zip is installed (brew install p7zip).
• Compression — Default, None (Store), Fastest, Normal or Maximum. Plain .tar isn’t compressed, so the choice is greyed out there.
• Password and Verify — for 7-Zip archives only, and optional. A password-protected 7-Zip archive hides the file names too.

Create Archive works on local files. On an SFTP server, use right-click → Compress to build the archive on the server instead.

Good to know

• Server to server, without the detour. With an SFTP server in each pane, F5 sends a file straight from one server to the other, or streams it through your Mac with no temporary copy on your disk. See the SFTP guide.
• 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 an item of the same name, you choose what happens — or set a default in Settings → Transfers. See Handling conflicts.
• Throttle the speed. Settings → General → Throttle local copies to 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. Uploads and downloads have their own limits in Settings → Transfers.
• 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.
• Confirm drag and drop. Turn on “Ask for confirmation for drag and drop” in Settings → General and dropping files onto a pane asks before it copies or moves anything — useful on a trackpad. It’s off by default.
• 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.