Over the last year or so Nautilus, the default file manager in GNOME and Ubuntu, has gone through various UI changes.

Most of these changes have been for the better. Visual clutter has been reduced; toolbars have been reorganised; and the the placing of elements within the UI have been considered and adapted accordingly.

But not all of the changes and removals have been welcome. The reaction to yet more removals and rearranging in the ‘new’ version of Nautilus – now renamed ‘files’ – by GNOME developers has been vehement.

GNOME co-founder Federico Mena-Quintero even went as far as calling the removal of some Nautilus features by GNOME developers ‘vandalism.’

GNOME Patch for Ubuntu 12.04

On to the purpose of this post. If some of your favourite GNOME features have been removed in recent months then you may be able to get them back thanks to Nautilus Patch – a small Nautilus hack that allows you to re-enable several toolbar options, including: –

Show ‘Up’ navigation button

Enable ‘Location bar edit’ toggle

Hide the ‘Search’ button

Download and Install Nautilus Patch in Ubuntu 12.04

[box style=”alert”] This is a third party modification. Install/apply with caution. [/box]

Before you hit the ‘download’ button make sure that you understand this this patch is only intended for use with Ubuntu 12.04 and Nautilus 3.4.2 (i.e. the version included in Ubuntu 12.04)

32bit and 64bit .deb installers can be found at the link below.

[button size=”medium” color=”blue” url=”https://launchpad.net/nautiluspatchtogglelocationbar/trunk/nautiluspatchtogglelocationbar/”] Download Nautilus Patch (.Deb installers) [/button]

To install, double-click on the .deb file you downloaded and follow the onscreen prompts.

When finished, log out of Ubuntu and back in for the changes to take effect.

All that’s left for you to do is open a new Nautilus window and choose which ‘patch’ buttons are displayed. To do this open edit > preferences > toolbar and check or un-check the options you do or do not want to appear.

To remove the package and return to ‘stock’ Nautilus you will need to open a new Terminal window and enter the following command:

sudo apt-get remove nautiluspatch

Via Sadi Yumuşak