beacon VS dired-hacks

Agreed. I've had success with beacon-mode for the same purpose. Making C-v and M-v scroll by half pages also helps.

I use https://github.com/Malabarba/beacon

beacon which-key auto-package-update dired-hacks helm

Malabarba/beacon: A light that follows your cursor around so you don't lose it!

I use beacon-mode for this.

I’d add that for 1) beacon is a good package. For 2), this may be an issue where you have multiple emacs configuration files. This is a serious problem. 3) be patient, and use the magic GC hack. To add to that, you should probably set the GC threshold to be high. 4) projectile? 5)emacs -nw.

I have used Clemeras dired-git-info for a while, but it does not work well with my dired-auto-readme and dired-subtree from dired-hacks due to use of overlays.

beacon which-key auto-package-update dired-hacks helm

As an alternative to do stuff manually as Prot does, you can also take a look at dired-hacks by Goljer, a.k.a Fuco, in particular dired-subtree and dired-filter. Dired-subtree let's you "toggle" directory listings displayed inline, similar as how other file managers expand/collapse directories in "list-mode". If you prefer using Dired interactively, that one is a game changer in my opinion. I have 'dired-subtree-toggle' on a tab key, so I can just quickly press tab to "expand/collapse" a folder. it is not same as pressing 'i' in Dired and having content of a directory inserted "below", but in my opinion, I never find the built-in Dired version very appealing. Subtree-toggle also skips extra headers for inserted directories, and I can still do all dired operations on directories as if they were inserted with built-in method that Prot demonstrates. I have also used dired-subtree-toggle to make three small functions on top of it to expand entire directory tree one folder at a time, all at once and to collapse them.

On a similar note, dired-ranger has some awesome copy/paste/move functions.

I personally use just Dired, styled with some addons and a simple script where I use dired-subtree to expand/fold subdirectories one level at the time. You can use dired-subtree to expand one directory at a time.

dired-subtree (from dired-hacks) - hit tab on a directory and expand/fold the subtree;

If you are using dired-hacks, it comes with something called dired-subtree.