How can I disable type-to-search in 17.10 Files? [duplicate]

Solution 1:

Gnome decided to remove the navigation feature type-ahead and replace it with search. They fail to see this is a big problem for many users.

Up until Ubuntu 17.10 Canonical provided a patched version of Nautilus that retained this feature. This is not the case anymore and type-ahead is gone for good.

You are of course welcome to join the Nautilus mailing list and state your reasons why this feature is still needed. I don't see much use in that, though. One of the maintainers told me "This has been discussed to death and we have likely heard all the arguments."

Solution 2:

Woohoooo! There is a brand new modified version of Nautilus.

See https://launchpad.net/~lubomir-brindza/+archive/ubuntu/nautilus-typeahead

I've been waiting for a long time before I find this feature again. Hope that Nautilus developers will consider adding it as an option in the app.

Solution 3:

I've participated to long debates with the Nautilus developers and we were not able to be convincing enough to have this feature as it was before. The only response was that it was going to be improved in the future.

I like Nautilus but this change made it unusable for me. That drives me crazy.

My solution is simple: switch to another software. I now use Nemo which is fork of Nautilus.

Solution 4:

If you really want to have this functionality in Nautilus 3.26 (which is right now the current version in Ubuntu 17.10), check out my step-by-step guide to get it in this question: Traditional search-as-you-type on newer Nautilus versions to build your own version of Nautilus with the support patched back in!

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 are the steps. I'll assume you'll be working in ~/bld-nautilus-typeahead. Open the terminal 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 #)     
# uncomment 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 when the file you intended gets selected.