Nautilus 3.6 doesn't have a status bar?

In 12.04, Nautilus showed the amount of remaining space in the status bar , but as of 13.04 the status bar is gone.

gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.window-state start-with-status-bar true

turned out "no such key".

Is there any way to bring back the status bar?


The GNOME developers removed it.

  • Here are the changes made to remove it. If you are a coder you could put it back in your system. Or wait for someone else ;-)

  • Here is the bugreport asking for it to come back.


Other things removed ...

  • Compact View
  • ‘Type Ahead Find’
  • ‘New file’ templates
  • Application Menu
  • ‘Go’ menu
  • F3 split screen
  • ‘tree’ view
  • Bookmark menu items
  • Backspace shortcut to return to parent folder

Options

The only method I know to get it back is to uninstall Nautilus 3.6, remove the ppa and install Nautilus 3.4 from the default Ubuntu 12.10 repositories. Or start searching for another file manager. Have a look at: http://www.junauza.com/2012/07/best-alternative-file-managers-for.html

Addition

Keep an eye out for SolusOS Patched Nautilus. See feature 1 in the list below.

Warning: This is only for those who are using the official Nautilus 3.6 packages from the Ubuntu 13.04 (or 12.10 and 12.04) repositories.

If you want these features back in Ubuntu 13.04, a proper appmenu for Nautilus along with other features / options such as:

  • customizable toolbar with back / forward buttons on the left: you can add or remove the up, refresh, home, computer and search icons and you can also add the old location / path bar toggle button which was removed from Nautilus starting with version 2.30;
  • unified toolbar that spreads across the whole window width unlike in the original Nautilus 3.4 (also, only one toolbar is used when using the extra pane (F3) feature);
  • other minor features like displaying the icons in the pathbar for Documents, Downloads, etc.

Installation:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/experiments
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
nautilus -q

Revert to original Nautilus:

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:webupd8team/experiments
nautilus -q

The status bar has changed since the previous version of Nautilus, though the functionality it provided should be relatively intact. The status bar acts as a transient overlay, now, so it doesn't take up as much space. It appears when it thinks it has something useful to tell you. If you select some files, you will see a bubble at the bottom of the window with some information about those files.

Nautilus 3.8 with some files selected

Naturally, this will not tell you the amount of free space. If you need to find that, you can right click a folder (right click any empty space for the current folder), or go to the options menu, and choose Properties. From there, you will see "Free Space" in the list of basic information.

Folder properties, showing that I have 6.9 GB of free space in that particular location