7

As one can resize the icons on desktop (not within nautilus) through righ-click menu: "Resize icon..", so where is the size stored for that certain file.

2
  • Have you looked at /usr/share/pixmaps ?
    – William
    Dec 14, 2011 at 17:55
  • I meant those preview icons for my custom photo files or documents. IMHO they cannot be stored in /usr since you need extended privileges for that.
    – math
    Dec 14, 2011 at 18:41

2 Answers 2

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+50

File attributes for icons are stored in binary files inside ~/.local/share/gvfs-metadata/.

To read an attribute for a file you need to use the gvfs-info command supplied by the gcfs-bin package.

To read the complete metadata stored from a file/folder on the gvfs use gvfs-info -a "metadata::*" <path_to_file/folder>, ie

gvfs-info -a "metadata::*" /home/bruno/Desktop/Screenshot\ at\ 2011-12-14\ 21:29:29.png

attributes:
  metadata::icon-scale: 2.6875
  metadata::nautilus-icon-position-timestamp: 1323894580
  metadata::screen: 
  metadata::nautilus-icon-position: 77,15

To set an attribute inside the gvfs you use the command gvfs-set-attribute which is also part of gvfs-bin as this gvfs-set-attribute <path_to_some_file/folder> metadata::some-key "some_value"

If you want to change the scale of an icon in gnome you need to change the icon-scale attribute so for the file shown before if I wanted to reset the scale to 1 would do that as this

gvfs-set-attribute /home/bruno/Desktop/Screenshot\ at\ 2011-12-14\ 21:29:29.png metadata::icon-scale "1"

Unfortunately I could only see the changes after I logged off and back in on, unity --replace & did not do the trick. I am not sure if you can force Gnome to reload the data from the gvfs binaries.

5
  • I think you got my question wrong. On desktop icons there is a right-click menu "Resize icon...". If you click on that you get blue corners which you can drag and drop to a certain size, There are definitely more than 7 discrete levels. So where is that icon size parameter stored for that certain file on the desktop?
    – math
    Dec 1, 2011 at 16:05
  • Sorry really imagined you wanted to change all the icons at the same time, will delete this and change it when I get the answer right. Dec 1, 2011 at 17:56
  • 1
    Updated answer to fit your question. Dec 14, 2011 at 21:10
  • Great even the thumbnail path is shown!
    – math
    Dec 15, 2011 at 2:49
  • To reload the metadata, quit nautilus using nautilus --quit and then restart it using nautilus -n. Its important to run the last command using your desktop shell's "Run Command" because it will block your console and die when you quit the console.
    – Guss
    Dec 21, 2015 at 6:33
0

The icons doesnt really have a size, they are all SVG which are infinite on size.

The Size which nautilus use to display it inside itself its stored on the Nautilus hidden folder on your $HOME (in .config/nautilus, but this may differ on newer versions)

1
  • The .config/nautilus/desktop-metadata file contains only metadata for "special icons" on the desktop, such as your trash.
    – Guss
    Dec 21, 2015 at 6:35

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