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Until now I was using a "traditional" version of Nautilus: that that comes with Ubuntu 10.10. Now I'm using 3.6.3, included with Ubuntu 13.04 (most likely any recent version is equivalent for the scope of my question, anyway).

One major difference between the two is the search-as-you-type behavior: in classic versions of Nautilus, when you typed an input, the file with the closest alphabetical match would become the selected one, the eligible files/folders being restricted to the current directory.

The new behavior is to perform an optionally-global search instead.

Can one configure Nautilus to provide the previous functionality ?

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Ubuntu 17.10 and later

As the type-ahead search was a Ubuntu-specific patch, it got dropped together with Unity in 17.10. However there is a package called nautilus-typeahead in the Arch repository. Someone took it, compiled for Ubuntu and made a PPA. You can install it by these three commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lubomir-brindza/nautilus-typeahead
sudo apt dist-upgrade
nautilus -r

There is an issue on Launchpad about bringing this behavior back to official Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 14.04 to 17.04

Since the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS release type-ahead-find was the default behaviour in Nautilus again.

You can use a dconf key to switch between the different search modes:

  • enable type-ahead-find:

    gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences enable-interactive-search true

  • disable type-ahead-find in favor of recursive search:

    gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences enable-interactive-search false

Ubuntu 13.04 and 13.10

Nautilus 3.6.X cuts many features from the 3.4 and older versions. Canonical decided to keep using nautilus 3.4.2 in Ubuntu 12.10 because if this even though Nautilus 3.6 was already released. I don't think it is possible to get the old search behaviour in 3.6 but what I did was to install the SolusOS patched Nautilus (also works for Ubuntu 13.04) which includes all the features from 3.4.2 (it really is Nautilus 3.4.2) while maintaining the Nautilus 3.6 skin. I've tested this particular package and it works fine in Ubuntu 12.10 and 13.04.

Alternatively you could install the Nemo File Explorer which is a fork of Nautilus 3.4 that was made due to the Cinnamon dev team being disappointed with Nautilus 3.6, you can get the install instructions here.

Making it your default file browser is a bit more tricky, this blog post worked for me in Ubuntu 12.10 but some users reported the method not to work properly.

There are alternative methods however. See the following question:

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    GNOME in their infinite dictatorial wisdom have seemingly decided that we do not want this preference anymore, therefore it doesn't exist. Thanks again, GNOME. – underscore_d Apr 9 '16 at 21:37
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    @fernando-domínguez on nautilus 3.24 this option is no longer available. Can you update your answer? (as I have a feeling that this question will have a lot of hits in the near future) – shil88 May 2 '17 at 13:20
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    I get: No such key “enable-interactive-search”. I got gsettings and also nautilus --version is GNOME nautilus 3.26.0. – Guillaume Chevalier Sep 24 '17 at 23:20
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    nautilus -r shows Unknown option -r for me on 18.04 so I just did nautilus -q and then open Files from the launcher. Rest all worked perfect, thanks! Back to normal life. – Siddharth Pant Sep 13 '18 at 8:44
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    Urgh... I really don't want to add a PPA for this very basic behaviour. – Martin R. Feb 5 '19 at 17:34
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Ubuntu 18.04 and newer

Well, this issue has motivated me enough to finally check out Ubuntu's PPA submission process; you can find Nautilus packages with the Arch community patch applied here: https://launchpad.net/~lubomir-brindza/+archive/ubuntu/nautilus-typeahead and install it by running:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lubomir-brindza/nautilus-typeahead
sudo apt upgrade
# or, if you don't want to upgrade any other packages:
sudo apt install nautilus

ed: PPA now contains package for groovy gorilla (20.10)

I'd just like to clarify the "Someone took it, compiled for Ubuntu and made a PPA" part in the top post - that's really not how PPA works. The actual way this works is that you provide a patch that adds/changes the desired functionality (typeahed in this case), and add it on top of all the other Ubuntu-specific patches you get when you download the source package using apt-get source nautilus. Once that's done and you've updated the changelog, debuild will create digitally signed files that describe what exactly changed with regards to the upstream source package. Only those are ever uploaded to Launchpad, which then attempts to compile and build the package. The changes to the upstream are reviewable in the Launchpad interface.

TL;DR: one does not upload the complete source code nor binaries directly to Launchpad nor PPA repository. Just wanted to clarify that, in case anyone was wary of something shady happening.

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    Glad you did it! Thank you for this PPA :) – G. Demecki Jun 9 '18 at 18:55
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    Just tried it on 18.10: nautilus -r responds Unknown option -r – Mene Oct 29 '18 at 14:54
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    FYI: I've added deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/lubomir-brindza/nautilus-typeahead/ubuntu bionic main as line to my sources and they get hit by apt, but no effect so far on cosmic. Don't know enough about Ubuntu I guess. But thanks for you work! – Mene Oct 29 '18 at 15:14
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    @Mene - try switching the PPA repo back to cosmic; I've finally figured out what was preventing me from uploading packages for 18.10 - they should be live in a few minutes – lubomir.brindza Oct 31 '18 at 11:19
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    Back on 18.10 and everything works! – Mene Nov 18 '18 at 13:42
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In Ubuntu Gnome 14.04, open dconf-editor. Go to
org>gnome>nautilus>preferences.

Check the box next to enable-interactive-search. Restart nautilus

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  • Thanks! In order to restart nautilus, either relogin or give nautilus -q and then nautilus -n in the Alt+F2 box. – hytromo Oct 26 '14 at 19:11
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    this key doesn't exist in nautilus 3.25 anymore. How to active interactive search again ? – mxdsp Sep 9 '17 at 8:27
  • Nice, it combines well with the chosen answer (actually install a Nautilus with type-ahead search) in case I want to disable type-ahead search later. – hsandt Jan 5 '19 at 19:56
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Ubuntu 18.04+, Nautilus native solution

You can get a close behavior to search-as-you-type if you change the following options in the Nautilus Menu -> File -> Preferences -> Search & Preview:

  • Change "Search in subfolders" to "Never"
  • Uncheck the "Full Text Search": "Set as default" option

Now the visual interface will still be as the new Nautilus (tested with v3.26.4), while the functionality will be similar to the search-as-you-type as in the older Nautilus.

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    In this case, while typing, it filters and only show the results, instead of move the selection to the 1st file containing the typed expression. – Sigur Jul 31 '19 at 18:44
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    @Sigur It does show only the filter results, however, it also does move the selection to the first file in the results. I use this search followed by Enter, or arrow keys and Enter for fast finding of the directory or file that I need. Just like with the old Nautilus. – elomage Aug 3 '19 at 7:55
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    It's very slow and I hate it but at least it's better now, thanks. – Lambart Oct 25 '19 at 18:45
  • When you close the search after selecting the result, there is no selection at all, so this is completely useless for me. (I need to navigate to a file alphabetically, and extend the selection to the end of the file list) – Mark Jeronimus Jun 27 '20 at 22:53
  • @MarkJeronimus When I type letters, the selection moves to the first file name that matches the entered pattern. If I want to expand to the full file list with the found match still selected - I press ESC and have the full list of files and directories with the last found item selected. Just tested, works for the version 3.26.4. – elomage Jun 29 '20 at 4:30
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There is actually a way to get this in Nautilus 3.26 (the current version in Ubuntu 17.10). Which is building your own version from source, using a patch provided by the awesome arch-linux community. Luckily, the great build system in Ubuntu makes this quite easy. Here's the steps. I'll assume you'll be working in ~/bld-nautilus-typeahead. Start a console and do the following:

# install some necessary tools
sudo apt-get install git

# Create your work directory and go there
mkdir bld-nautilus-typeahead ; cd bld-nautilus-typeahead

# Clone the repository holding the needed patch: 
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/nautilus-typeahead.git

# Make sure the source repositories for the main archives are available:
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

# If the deb-src line for the main repository (usually around line 6) is commented out (starts with a #), un-comment it (remove the #) and save the file
sudo apt-get update

# Install the build dependencies
sudo apt-get build-dep nautilus

# Retrieve the sources for Nautilus
apt-get source nautilus

# Source should now be in the 'nautilus-3.26.0/' folder. Go there
cd nautilus-3.26.0/

# and Apply the patch from arch-linux
patch -p0 < ../nautilus-typeahead/nautilus-restore-typeahead.patch

# Build the package from source
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -b

# This will take a little time. If everything goes well, the related packages will end up in the parent directory. Go there
cd ..

# and install the required packages
sudo dpkg -i nautilus_3.26.0-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb nautilus-data_3.26.0-0ubuntu1_all.deb

Start a new Nautilus. Type some letters. Experience that feeling of joy that happens whem the file you intended gets selected.

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    Applying the patch, I get "can't find file to patch at input line 5 // Perhaps you used the wrong -p or --strip option? // Text leading up to this was ... " and an option to choose file to patch. Any suggestions? – Rasmus Feb 20 '18 at 9:43
  • @Rasmus manually entering the path worked for me. If the .patch file references a/some/path enter ./some/path. I'm pretty sure this isn't the smart way to do it but it worked... – 0x539 Apr 4 '18 at 1:09
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    The answer above for using the Arch patch works, but I had to specify -p1 instead of -p0. – Juraj Apr 27 '18 at 14:53
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Not quite what I wanted but the following limits the search to the current directory and is a very lightweight compromise:

# Get the previous setting in case I want to revert.
gsettings get org.gnome.nautilus.preferences recursive-search &&

# Only search the current directory. Do not go deeper.
gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences recursive-search 'never'

Tested on Ubuntu v18.10.

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  • Work find for me for a quick fix. Thanks. Still not the real thing. So much poeple are angry at this. I don't understand the change. – Stéphan Champagne Aug 15 '20 at 2:40
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Ubuntu has updated the Nautilus repository, as a result the accepted answer no longer works. Use the command below to get the correct version of PPA Nautilus.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lubomir-brindza/nautilus-typeahead
sudo apt-get install nautilus=1:3.26.4-0~ubuntu18.04.4.ppa1 libnautilus-extension1a=1:3.26.4-0~ubuntu18.04.4.ppa1 nautilus-data=1:3.26.4-0~ubuntu18.04.4.ppa1
sudo apt-mark hold nautilus libnautilus-extension1a nautilus-data
nautilus -q

This works on Ubuntu 18.04, if you are using another version use the apt-cache policy nautilus to find the correct version of PPA.

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The answer for Nautilus 3.25 and above is it's gone & not coming back unless someone totally rewrites the ubuntu patch & odds of that are extremely slim to none.

It is not something that can be configured in nautilus itself.

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