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.

Nautilus keyboard shortcuts

I have recently installed Ubuntu 11.04 on my laptop and until I got used to Unity I couldn’t find the menu bar for the nautilus window. I found out later that the menu for the application in focus appears in the desktop menu bar. However I urgently needed to find a hidden file and I half remembered that the keyboard shortcut was Control-h. That worked and so I started looking up other keyboard shortcuts and have put them together in a list below. I hope they are useful to someone.

Ctrl+A – Select All
Ctrl+D – Add to Bookmarks
Ctrl+B – Edit Bookmarks
Ctrl+W – Close Window
Ctrl+Q – Close All Windows
Ctrl+R – Reload/Refresh Window
Ctrl+S – Select Items Matching (Enter the pattern)
Ctrl+L – Go To Location Bar
Ctrl+H – Toggle ‘Show Hidden Files’
Ctrl+C – Copy Selected
Ctrl+X – Cut Selected
Ctrl+V – Paste Selected
Ctrl+T – Open New Tab
Ctrl+1 – Icon View
Ctrl+2 – List View
Ctrl+3 – Compact View
Ctrl++ – Zoom In
Ctrl+- – Zoom Out
Ctrl+0 – Reset Zoom Level
Ctrl+Shift+I – Invert Selection
Ctrl+Shift+N – Create New Folder
Ctrl+M – Create Link (Shortcut) [Highlight the file / folder first and then use press Ctrl+M]
Delete – Delete To Trash
Shift+Delete – Delete Permanently
Alt+Enter – Properties
Alt+Up – Open Parent Folder
Alt+Left – Go Back
Alt+Right – Go Forward
Alt+Home – Go To Home Folder
F1 – Open Help
F3 – Toggle Dual Pane Mode
F9 – Toggle Side Panel