The Places panel is located at the left of the window by default. The Places panel shows any locations you have bookmarked. It also shows any disk or media attached to the computer, recently accessed items and allows you to search for certain type of files. The order of these entries can be changed by drag and drop.

The easiest way to add a folder to the Places panel is to drag it and drop it in the panel. Moreover, you can click inside the panel with the right mouse button and choose Add Entry... from the context menu. The first procedure creates a system wide bookmark, the second procedure can be used to add the current path of the location bar or any desired folder or device. A dialog opens where label, location and icon can be edited and the usage of this entry can be restricted to Dolphin.

A right mouse button click opens the context menu to edit, add, hide or remove entries and change the icon size to one of the predefined values or lock/unlock the panels.

The context menu has an action to open the entry in a new tab. Devices can be unmounted using the context menu.

The Information panel shows extended information about the selected items(s) or about the current folder or the file which is currently hovered over with the mouse, including size, type, and date of last modification. It also features a large preview of the selected item and allows you to assign a rating, tags, and comments to it.

The Folders panel shows a tree view structure of the file system. It only shows folders. Clicking a folder with the left mouse button opens this folder in the Dolphin view.

Use Limit to Home Directory to hide all folders from the tree view except your Home.

This panel contains a terminal. The terminal will open at the folder currently shown in the Dolphin view. Changing the folder in the active Dolphin view will update the working folder of the terminal. Changing the directory in the terminal will update the working folder in the Dolphin view. The terminal only works with local media.