Nautilus in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal

I have had a couple of issues with Nautilus since upgrading the Ubuntu 11.04.

Where is the menu bar? Until I got used to Unity I didn’t realize that the menu for each application with focus is in the desktop menu bar. Its pretty neat when you get used to it.

Shortcuts. Because of the issue above I couldn’t find hidden files until I remembered Control-h which I haven’t used in years. This got me to thinking of the other shortcuts so I made a short list and posted it here.

Location Bar. I prefer a text based location bar because I like to cut and paste from it. Here is how to make a text based location bar the default.

Nautilus Location Bar

I have always preferred to use the text based location bar in Nautilus as it is useful for cutting and pasting into other applications etc. In earlier versions there was a button to switch from the breadcrumb view to the text based view but this button is missing in Natty Narwhal. You can switch to the text based view with Control-l or select Go -> location but the next time you open a window the breadcrumb view is back.

To permanently have a text based location bar go to a terminal and type:

gconf-editor 

In the editor click on apps in the left hand column and then select nautilus and preferences. Check the box at the side of always_use_location_entry in the right hand box.

That’s it.