Neotree

⚠️ Deprecation Warning!

This patch is no longer needed, all-the-icons is now supported by NeoTree on its own. Just install both packages and then set your NeoTree theme to 'icons

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This page contains a couple of patches that you can use to get File Icons alongside your Neotree file tree. The same idea can be applied to other file tree viewers, I just happen to use Neotree.

N.B I plan on supplying a patch in the future to the author of Neotree to include all-the-icons with file icons as a 'theme'

Patching the Functions

In order to get Neotree to show file icons, you will have to override the functions which insert the fold symbols. These functions change based on the 'theme' you choose when customising Neotree.

This means that applying this patch will ignore whatever theme you previously selected, however, that's the point so that shouldn't be a surprised!

(defun neo-buffer--insert-fold-symbol (name &optional file-name)
  "Custom overriding function for the fold symbol.
`NAME' decides what fold icon to use, while `FILE-NAME' decides
what file icon to use."
  (or (and (equal name 'open)  (insert (all-the-icons-icon-for-dir file-name "down")))
      (and (equal name 'close) (insert (all-the-icons-icon-for-dir file-name "right")))
      (and (equal name 'leaf)  (insert (format "\t\t\t%s\t" (all-the-icons-icon-for-file file-name))))))

This is the function which actually inserts the icon, the reason you have to patch the original function is because you need the file-name to be passed into all-the-icons-icon-for-file, which isn't done by default. Otherwise, you could achieve the same result using advice.

(defun neo-buffer--insert-dir-entry (node depth expanded)
  (let ((node-short-name (neo-path--file-short-name node)))
    (insert-char ?\s (* (- depth 1) 2)) ; indent
    (when (memq 'char neo-vc-integration)
      (insert-char ?\s 2))
    (neo-buffer--insert-fold-symbol
     (if expanded 'open 'close) node)
    (insert-button (concat node-short-name "/")
                   'follow-link t
                   'face neo-dir-link-face
                   'neo-full-path node
                   'keymap neotree-dir-button-keymap)
    (neo-buffer--node-list-set nil node)
    (neo-buffer--newline-and-begin)))

(defun neo-buffer--insert-file-entry (node depth)
  (let ((node-short-name (neo-path--file-short-name node))
        (vc (when neo-vc-integration (neo-vc-for-node node))))
    (insert-char ?\s (* (- depth 1) 2)) ; indent
    (when (memq 'char neo-vc-integration)
      (insert-char (car vc))
      (insert-char ?\s))
    (neo-buffer--insert-fold-symbol 'leaf node-short-name)
    (insert-button node-short-name
                   'follow-link t
                   'face (if (memq 'face neo-vc-integration)
                             (cdr vc)
                           neo-file-link-face)
                   'neo-full-path node
                   'keymap neotree-file-button-keymap)
    (neo-buffer--node-list-set nil node)
    (neo-buffer--newline-and-begin)))

These two functions are the ones that call neo-buffer--insert-fold-symbol, and the patch is just to pass through the file name (or node) in both cases.

Loading the patches

You want to do one of the following

• Make sure that these patches are applied after Neotree has loaded,
• Edit your local copy of Neotree source file (but that interferes with updates and stuff...).

I use use-package which allows you to manage your package dependencies much better! It allows you define an :after block to be run once a package is loaded, i.e.

(use-package neotree
  :after
  ;; Load the above patches
  )

Alternatively, you can use with-eval-after-load to apply the patches after Neotree. This can be found as a patch file here

Colour Icons

By default, all-the-icons will show the file icons in colour. If you want to disable this, you can set all-the-icons-color-icons to nil

(setq all-the-icons-color-icons nil)

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