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In Nautilus, I sometimes want to change the mode of the side-pane (Tree, Places, etc).

This can be done via the a mouse click on the drop button at the top of the side-pane.
...but there is no hot-key/accelerator-key to quickly display this drop-list.

I usually prefer the keyboard for basic navigation, and this lack of simple keyboard navigation is a pain in the proverbial.

If there were even a menu item to jump across to the side-pane, it wouldn't be such a pain (bad pun)... and I could just set the menu-item's accelerator key... but there isn't such a menu item!

Can I create a menu-item for this particlar chore?
or, is there already a hot-key for this?
(Jumping directly across to the side-pane would be enough. Dropping the list is ideal)

Ctrl+Tab does some sort of navigation, but it seems to stop at every control on its route, and this results in a varying number of whistle-stops, depending on the state of the rest of the window (eg. Extra pane, Expanded trees...)

2 Answers 2

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It's not a hotkey, but:

If your selection is in the nautilus main window, "tab-tab-space" should drop down the list.

I'd imagine there's some sort of linux keybinding widget that would bind this keyboard combo to something more useful, like "control+`" or whatever you wanted; however, I do not know what that utility is.

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  • m ... Yes, tab-tab does get me there most of the time, so thanks for that. I'll use that for now... However, getting back is another issue... It seems that nautilus (and many other programs these days) are written in a mouse-centric way... The original well thought out paradigm of equal functionality for both mouse and keyboard seems to have gone by the wayside, somewhat. C'est la vie! Nautilus is still a great program, and I'll just have to work with it, and perhaps around it with xmacro
    – Peter.O
    Oct 8, 2010 at 21:17
  • ... my previous message got sent prematurely... here is the last part: ... and perhaps work around it with xmacro and xbindkeys... but I'll probably just use it as-is, now that I know that there's (probably) no single key option.
    – Peter.O
    Oct 8, 2010 at 21:26
  • I agree about the creeping 'mouse-centricness' of modern applications. =) ... I'm a big believer in intuitive design, but also a fanatic for efficiency of use, which puts me in an odd position between the two paradigms. I want to get as close from direct brain-to-computer translation as possible, which is possible with a finely honed set of keyboard shorcuts wired into your nervous system, but we'll probably not live to see the days of functional and ubiquitous thought-controlled computers. ...sigh /end techno-dreams
    – emf
    Oct 10, 2010 at 2:53
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I've also gone looking for this as a possible configuration setting under metacity (gconf-editor>applications>nautilus", but found no such thing.

I did, however, find something useful:

gconf-editor /apps/nautilus/preferences/side_pane_view

This sets the default view for the side panel in new windows.

This is a promising lead, but no cigar.

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  • 1
    This is a good bit of info... It does what it does, and is useful, but I couldn't wrangle anything more out of it... so, as you said, "no cigar", but you can have your choice of a GI-Joe or an Arnie(Arnold?)... Thanks.
    – Peter.O
    Oct 8, 2010 at 21:32
  • 'you can have your choice of a GI-Joe or an Arnie(Arnold)' lol.
    – emf
    Oct 10, 2010 at 2:54

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