The main window
A quick orientation tour. Once you know where everything lives, the rest of the manual will make sense as it points at this or that panel.
The pieces
- Menu bar. Top of the window. Houses every global action — see below.
- Tab bar. Sits under the menu bar. One tab per open file.
- Pack tree. Left dock, top half. Shows the files inside the open Packs. Right-click anything in the tree for context actions; double-click a file to open its editor in a new tab.
- Dependencies. Left dock, under the Pack tree. Shows the contents of the active game’s dependencies cache (vanilla + parent mod Packs), so you can browse them alongside your own files.
- Editor area. The big central region. Whatever tab is active here drives most of what you can do.
- Side and bottom panels.
- Diagnostics — bottom dock, visible by default. Lint-style warnings for the open Packs.
- Global Search — right dock, hidden by default. Toggle from View or with its shortcut.
- References — bottom dock, hidden by default. Populated when you ask “what points at this row?” from an editor.
- Quick Notes — not a dock. It’s a side panel inside each file editor, toggled per-tab.
- Status bar. Bottom strip. Shows short-lived status messages from the last operation.
The welcome page
When no Pack is open, the editor area is replaced by a welcome page with quick links to recent Packs, the manual, the GitHub project, the Patreon (wink wink), and some other useful stuff.
The command palette
Press Ctrl+P (or Ctrl+Shift+P for the action variant) anywhere in the app to open the command palette. It’s a fuzzy finder for:
- Open files (jump to any file inside the Pack by typing part of its path).
- Available commands (run any menu action by typing its name).
For most “where is the menu item that does X?” questions, the command palette is the answer.
The menu bar
| Menu | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Pack | Pack lifecycle: new, open, save (single Pack or all open ones), save for release, close, recent files, open from content / autosave / data / secondary, session picker, Pack settings, quit. |
| MyMod | The MyMod project workflow: open the MyMod folder, create a new MyMod, import / export all open MyMods in one go, and a per-game submenu listing the existing MyMods for that game so you can open them directly. Deleting a MyMod now lives in the Pack tree’s right-click menu (on a MyMod Pack’s root). See What is MyMod?. |
| View | Toggle the bottom and side docks (Diagnostics, Global Search, References, Quick Notes, Dependencies). |
| Game Selected | Switch the active Total War game, launch it, open its data / Assembly Kit folders, open RPFM’s config folder, and regenerate the dependencies cache. |
| Tools | Integrated tools that span multiple files: Translator, Faction Painter, Unit Editor. |
| About | Manual, repo, Patreon, Discord, version info, check for updates. |
| Debug | Hidden by default. Enable it from Preferences → Debug to expose lower-level commands useful for development. |
Connecting the dots
If you want a focused walk-through of a particular task, the rest of this section covers Pack-level workflows:
For the editors themselves (DB, Loc, Text, etc.), see the Editors section. For everything Pack-relationship-related (search, diagnostics, references), see Search & analysis.