Ubuntu GNOME

Type-ahead in Nautilus

Asked by gregreen

When you begin typing in Nautilus, the behavior used to be that the first matching file in the current directory would be selected. This is called "type-ahead" functionality.

The last few versions of Nautilus have included a new behavior. When you begin typing, Nautilus executes a full search of all the subdirectories.

The Gnome developers are very resistant to including the old behavior as an option. The Ubuntu developers, however, have patched their version of Nautilus to allow the user to optionally restore type-ahead functionality. The bug report which discusses the Ubuntu patch to Nautilus is here: <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/1164016>.

Is it possible for the Ubuntu GNOME team to also patch Nautilus, so that the user can choose to enable type-ahead, instead of the new search feature?

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Answered
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Ubuntu GNOME Edit question
Assignee:
Bruce Pieterse Edit question
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Bruce Pieterse (octoquad) said : 		#1

Hi Thucydides411,

The good news is that we don't have to patch anything. You can enable this feature with dconf-editor (sudo apt-get install dconf-editor) and then navigate to org.gnome.nautilus.preferences and check enable-interactive-search.

I have to thank JockeTF on #ubuntu-gnome for pointing this out to me. This currently works with the latest version of Ubuntu Gnome 14.10. I have not tested 14.04 but I'm sure it's there as well.

Revision history for this message
Bruce Pieterse (octoquad) said : 		#2

Bruce Pieterse suggests this article as an answer to your question:
FAQ #2614: “How can I enable the old type-ahead feature found prior to nautilus 3.6?”.

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