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When I open the recent files view in Nautilus, it shows all files sorted descending by file name rather than by last access time. This contradicts the main idea of the recent files view, which is, to give an easy access to recently used files. Unfortunately, it is not possible to change the sort criteria in the view, as the row titles are disabled as you can see in the screenshot below:

enter image description here

As you see in the picture the files are sorted by name (descending): V, T, T etc...

How can I change the sort criteria to last access time? Is this a bug? By the way, I am using Ubuntu Gnome 17.04 with Nautilus 3.24.1.

|improve this question
  • In Nautilus you can go to menu Edit -> Preferences -> List Columns and check Accessed. Than in "View items as list" you can also sort by access time. – NonStandardModel Jul 3 '17 at 13:04
  • can you try adding accessed in visible collumns and see if it changes, because that worked for me tell me if it worked and ill write it as an answer, also try to use the arrows to move it to the top(before Name) – Mihail Mihov Jul 6 '17 at 7:18
  • @MihailMihov How did you do this? I cannot add any column to the recent files view. Any change I do to normal folder views is ignored by that view. – user5950 Jul 7 '17 at 11:29
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So that pane is intended not to be sortable, as evidenced here on the bug-tracker, and that is a bug.

Is it possible that you have accessed your files in that order? I'm running a later version of Nautilus than in the ticket, 3.24-1-1, where-in the Recent Files pane is definitely sorting via most recently accessed at the top.

For your version try clicking the menu button, and setting the "last modified" and "last accessed" fields as visible, and then sorting by those. You should be able to sort it yourself for this version, but a later version will do this automatically.

Hope that helps!

|improve this answer
  • No, unfortunately I haven't accessed the files in that order. They are clearly sorted by Name. And it's also not possible to add any field to the pane, as every setting has only effect on all other views but not on the recent files view. So maybe it is a bug in 3.24.1? – user5950 Jul 1 '17 at 21:00
  • What version are you running? If that's 3.24.1 then yes it's a bug. – Bujiraso Jul 2 '17 at 15:26
  • Yes, Nautilus 3.24.1 from Ubuntu Gnome 17.04 (edited my question accordingly) – user5950 Jul 2 '17 at 21:29
  • I'm gonna guess it's a bug in the sort-field override (source). I'm guessing that you at some point in the past clicked the name field and that it's not getting overridden. I'll try and find the setting that you need to clear. My "gsettings get org.gnome.nautilus.preferences default-sort-order" returns "name" and the function works for me, so maybe it's something deeper. – Bujiraso Jul 3 '17 at 11:30
  • Could you run a "gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences default-sort-in-reverse-order false" and restart GDM? Curious if that might be doing it. – Bujiraso Jul 3 '17 at 11:39

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