GNOME/Files

Files is the default file manager for GNOME. Files attempts to provide a streamlined method to manage both files and applications.

Note: Files was known as Nautilus prior to version 3.6. The application was given new descriptive names, one for each supported language. The name Nautilus is still used in numerous places such as the executable name, some package names, some desktop entries, and some GSettings schemas.

Installation

Install the nautilus package. This package is part of the gnome group. See also File manager functionality#Additional features.

Note: Files does not depend on the gnome-shell package, only requiring gnome-desktop.

Extensions

Some programs can add extra functionality to Files. Here are a few packages in the official repositories and AUR that do just that.

Tip: This extension works only with these icon-themes which contain additional colored icons, eg:
numix-icon-theme-git^AUR, vibrancy-colors^AUR, humanity-icon-theme^AUR, mint-x-icons^AUR

• Nautilus Admin — Add to menu: "Open as administrator" or "Edit as administrator" (written in Python)

https://github.com/brunonova/nautilus-admin || nautilus-admin^AUR

• Nautilus Terminal — Terminal embedded in Files. It is always open in the current folder, and follows the navigation (written in Python)

https://projects.flogisoft.com/nautilus-terminal/ || nautilus-terminal

• Seahorse Nautilus — PGP encryption and signing for Files (written in C)

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/seahorse-nautilus || seahorse-nautilus

Applications that ship their own Nautilus extensions

The following applications install their own extensions by default, thus providing integration with Nautilus:

• GTK Hash — A cross-platform desktop utility for computing message digests or checksums — The application includes a "GTK Hash Properties Nautilus" extension (written in C)

https://github.com/tristanheaven/gtkhash || gtkhash^AUR and gtkhash-nautilus^AUR

• Tilix — A tiling terminal emulator for GNU/Linux using GTK+ 3 — The application includes an extension for Nautilus which adds an "Open in Tilix" option to the context menu (written in Python)

https://github.com/gnunn1/tilix || tilix

Extensions that rely on non-free software

Some extensions for GNOME Files, although free, might rely on non-free software. The following list provides a few examples:

Configuration

Files is simple to configure graphically, but not all options are available in the preferences menu. More options are available with dconf-editor under .

Change default item view

You can change the default view for the items by setting the variable, e.g. for the list view:

$ gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences default-folder-viewer 'list-view'

Sort by type

To sort files in all folders by type:

$ gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences default-sort-order 'type'

Remove folders from the places sidebar

The displayed folders are specified in and can be altered with any editor. An execution of xdg-user-dirs-update will change them again, thus it may be advisable to set the file permissions to read-only.

Always show text-entry location

The standard Files toolbar shows a button bar interface for path navigation. To enter path locations using the keyboard, you must expose the location text-entry field. This is done by pressing

To make the location text-entry field always present, use gsettings as shown below:

$ gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences always-use-location-entry true

Tips and tricks

Thumbnails

See File manager functionality#Thumbnail previews.

Note: On linux-hardened, thumbnails generation fails (all thumbnails go in ~/.cache/thumbnails/fail/). This is due to unprivileged user namespace being disabled by default on this kernel for security reasons. Nautilus uses bwrap (provided by bubblewrap) to sandbox thumbnailers. You may decide to replace bubblewrap with bubblewrap-suid. See Security#Sandboxing applications for more information.

Sometimes video thumbnails are not shown. To solve it (as mentioned in No video thumbnails on nautilus), you must install , , , and remove the content of .

Create a new document from the right-click menu

To get this option one has to create a folder in your home folder and place an empty file inside the folder through your favorite Terminal by or by using any other file manager. Then just restart Files.

On non-English installations, the templates directory might have another name. One can find the actual directory with .

The templates directory can be configured in the file:

XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/some/path"

Hiding files

Like most other file managers GNOME Files hides files with names starting with a dot by default.

GNOME Files additionally hides files when their names are listed in a .hidden file in the same directory (one filename per line). See for an extension that facilitates adding/removing entries from such .hidden files.

Open current directory in Tilix

If you are using terminal you can easily add "Open in Tilix" option to the context menu of GNOME Files by installing its optional dependency python-nautilus.

Add a folder to bookmarks

To add a folder to your bookmarks, simply press when you have the folder opened in Nautilus. Note that the list of bookmarks is shared with other GNOME-based graphical file managers (e.g. Nemo), so a folder added or removed from one will affect the bookmarks seen in the other.

Custom scripts

Scripts placed in can be run from the right click context menu of a file.

The context menu can also be organized into subfolders, e.g. and .

Scripts have access to the following environment variables:

NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS
NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_URIS
NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_CURRENT_URI
NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_WINDOW_GEOMETRY

Some example scripts:

Note: Make sure the scripts are marked as executable. You may have to restart nautilus with nautilus -q for them to show up.

Keybinds

Keybinds to execute scripts can be assigned in the file:

; Example Keybinds
; Modifiers: <Control> <Alt> <Shift>
F4 open-terminal-here
<Alt>x remove-extension

Troubleshooting

Files is no longer the default file manager

This can be caused by the file association for directories being reset. Installing tends to do this.

To solve this, open Files, right-click on a folder, and choose Open With Other Application > Files > Select. This will set the association for directories back to Files.

If this does not solve the issue, see File manager functionality#Directories are not opened in the file manager.

Freezes for a few seconds after every copy operation

In case you have installed in your system, the problem might be caused by its file sharing module. Deactivate file sharing, and it should stop happening.

Cannot open Google Drive

You may be missing one or more of the following packages:

• gvfs-google

Install them and you should be good to go.