The single cavity all-dielectric thin film Fabry-Perot filter (s-AFPF) is investigated in this letter as a means of tuning the wavelength in an external cavity diode laser (ECDL), and the means of limiting longitudinal mode hopping is also investigated. When a TE or TM plane wave irradiates a s-AFPF, a quasilinear relationship is found in a certain wavelength range between the optical intensity peak-transmittance wavelength of s-AFPF and the cosine value of plane wave incident angle at s-AFPF. Based on this feature, we propose and investigate a configuration with a s-AFPF in a tunable ECDL. By theoretical calculation, a mode-hop-free wavelength tuning range of ~5 nm around 1 550 nm is achieved. The ECDL can be used in the application of environmental monitoring, atomic and molecular laser spectroscopy research, precise measurements, and so on.