The Display tab of the Control panel
Description: Describes the Display tab of the Control panel and explains how to change the view's appearance.
Keywords: GrandPerspective, control panel, display tab, display, color, palette, mapping, mask, top folder, show entire volume, show package contents

# The Display tab

The Display tab in the Control Panel enables you to change how the active view is drawn. You can choose from various file color mappings:

- Creation: Files are colored based on the time when they were created.
- Extension: All files with the same extension have the same color.
- File type: The file type of each file determines its color. You can edit the order of the list of file types to control which file types are mapped to a unique color.
- Folder: All files in the same folder have the same color.
- Last access: Files are colored based on the time when they were last accessed.
- Last change: Files are colored based on the time when they were last modified.
- Level: The number of sub-folders in the path of each file, relative to the folder that is currently shown in the view, determines its color. All files at the same "level" of the file hierarchy have the same color.
- Name: Files with the same name will have the same color.
- Nothing: All files will have the same color.
- Top Folder: The first sub-folder in the path of each file, relative to the folder that is currently shown in the view, determines its color. All files that appear in the same "top folder" have the same color.

You can also select one of the various color palettes that is provided with the application. You can pick one that suits your taste. Note, however, that the number of colors per palette varies, which has an effect on the color mapping. The colors in the palette are shown below it. When a color mapping is used where colors have a meaningful interpretation, a description will be shown alongside each color.

You can also configure a mask. When you use a mask, only certain files are shown. Files that are masked, on the other hand, still take up space but are not drawn. Masking can be useful for quickly identifying certain (types of) files, and can also be useful step before applying a filter.

By default, the view only shows the files that have been scanned (or a subset thereof). However, you can choose to show the entire volume. By enabling this setting, the view also shows the free space and the miscellaneous used space. Note, if the total size of the scanned files is small compared to the size of the overall volume then the view will not be very interesting. In this case, you are better off disabling the "Show entire volume" setting again. Alternatively, you can scan the folder at the root of the volume, if you had not already done so.

You can configure if the contents of packages should be shown. If contents are hidden, each package appears as a single file in the view. After enabling "Show package contents", all files inside packages will be shown.