Same thing here. Having two monitors (1920x1080 and 1680x1050), first thing I tried was to resize icon like Gnome 42.
With Gnome 43, “small” is too small, and “medium” is already too big to me.
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I’d like to echo others here & say that the 67% is the right size for a lot of us. I’d really appreciate it if you guys reconsider its removal 
Generally speaking, I feel that this falls under accessibility. I love GNOME’s clean & minimalistic approach, but we need to be careful not to make the desktop experience unnecessarily more challenging to users in areas where the less is more concept genuinely doesn’t apply.
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It doesn’t seem the best strategy to call people crazy, if you wish to persuade them that something’s worth doing.
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That’s no reasons, It’s just an explanation that the developer don’t want this size : “we have 5 size options now, which a little too many”.
All the the posts I read are in favor of going back to 67% - 64 px , and these are well argued by all the people.
(Post edited by author to avoid censorship).
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I understand the idea behind the removal, but IMHO, the padding was not the only thing making the 67% worthwhile. The item size itself was visually making a big change. In my personal case, on my screen (2560*1440), one option makes things even bigger than the dock icons (which is ridiculously big for a windowed file manager - I mean, I have only three items in a row when the size of my file manager is a bit bigger than a quarter of my screen) , and the other ones makes them so small that you cannot event get what is on a pdf thumbnail. (To be honest, the fact that the folder “icons” switch to a “simplified” one at this level makes the whole thing looks “cheap” at this size, that could also be part of the problem. On those matters it’s really hard to separate personal tastes and opinions from hard facts)
Just to be clear, Nautilus 43 is a really big step forward and I certainly wouldn’t go back to the previous version (thanks to the gnome team for the incredible work). The missing 67% view is really the only thing i’am not convinced about.
Right, making an application for everybody is always hard because it can never please everybody equally.
I mean, I could just replace 48px icons with 64px icons and call it a day! After all, everyone here has expressed personal preference for 64px icons, right?
However, this has a huge bias: only people who prefer 64px over 48px have come to share their opinion. People who prefer 48px are happy and, therefore, have no reason need to search for and find this thread here.
And honestly, I’d expect more people to be displeased by letting 48px go, because that’s the size that can fit the most icons at once. And some people really care more about how many files are shown, rather than their icon sizes.
I personally don’t have a preference. I’d just prefer to make eveybody everywhere happy at the same time. Unfortunately that’s impossible.
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Let’s also clarify that version 43 is already out. It’s too late to make visual changes. Only bugfixes are allowed for this version.
For version 44, there is a good chance that the grid view is changing again. Even the icons might change. The design team is hard at work to try and make it awesome. So now is a good time to get involved and contribute towards the end result.
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Other than that, for anyone who wants to get back the 64px size without going back to version 42, the only alternative is to build from source after changing this line by replacing 48 with 64: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/-/blob/master/src/nautilus-enums.h#L33
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Antonio, I really appreciate the hard work you did. It is not easy to develop a project like Nautilus.
Your clarification honors you, but when you say “Unfortunately that’s impossible” , i will say: How about leaving all the sizes and let the user decide?
It’s not a battle between 48 vs 64. Everyone knows the environment in which they work and will have preferences about it. Give him options, not frustrations. As for the rest, my congratulations for the work done.
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+1 to Carlos’ note. It’s not about us being biased just because we have a preference due to screen size, resolution, or even disability. Nor this is a battle between 48 vs 64. I’d understand this decision better if there was a clear reason to explicitly have a specific number of sizes, then referring to some stats to pick the most used sizes. I don’t understand why we can’t all win here as this has a small maintenance cost compared to the amount of benefit it has for the community & the accessibility of the GNOME desktop.
Hi, I’m one of those who don’t understand why the 67% size was removed. I’m currently on Ubuntu 22.04, but this is a major thing stopping me from upgrading to ubuntu 22.10 which is so perfect apart from that little detail. You say there is a way? How to build nautilus-enums.h after editing? What is the procedure?
You’ve already quoted the answer:
Important context explanation: there were 4 size options in version 42; there are 4 size options in 43. With the introduction of the 256px extra large size, a compromise had to be done somewhere, otherwise we would end up with 5 options.
A quick web search got me this result: compiling - How to download, modify, build and install a Debian source package? - Ask Ubuntu however I have not tested whether it works. Be aware that modifying your system packages may have unexpected consequences if you don’t know what you are doing!
Genuinely asking since I’m not familiar with the decision making process of the team:
1- Do we expect more people to benefit from the 256px option over the 64px & that’s why they were swapped? In Version 42 64px was set as the standard size in the code, Ubuntu desktop icons default to that size as well even in 43.
2- I’m also curious why 5 options are considered too many. Is there a spec sheet that dictates that there should always be 4 options? Any UX research you can point to that guided your decision? I’m asking because saying “we have 5 size options now, which a little too many” just sounds like one person’s subjective opinion is being forced on the masses. I really don’t want to believe that this is the case, but so far, we really haven’t received an answer that makes us go “you know what, that’s a fair point”.
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And that’s the point: number of files displayed versus thumbnail size (I don’t think it’s icon size).
In sum:
- Show as many files as possible.
- Recognize files by their thumbnail (e.g. images).
- Balance between the two, maybe mainly due to having different types of files in a folder.
But, as I said before, it seems difficult to find a design for this…
Thanks for asking! Both are great questions I’m happy to answer. There is a lot of history.
Background on the 256px option
For a long time, thumbnails were capped at 128px.
10 years ago, 256px size thumbnails were introduced by a GNOME 3 designer Increase the size of thumbnails to 256 (c5872652) · Commits · GNOME / GNOME Utility Library · GitLab.
5 years ago, the option to display 256px thumbnails in was introduced in nautilus as part of an experimental feature – the new grid view:(view-icon: add new zoom level (1e5eba1d) · Commits · GNOME / Files · GitLab)
That experimental grid view has served as the foundation for the new grid that has debuted in version 43 The icon view is dead, long live the icon view! – Blog about what I do
I personally figured it would be correct to follow up on the precedents and keep the 256px as a highlight feature of the new grid view.
Background on why 4 options
Going back in time again, long ago there were as many as 7 zoom levels: libnautilus-private/nautilus-icon-info.h · 3.0.0 · GNOME / Files · GitLab
Seven years ago this has been reduced to only 3: nautilus-icon-info: rework zoom levels (1968379a) · Commits · GNOME / Files · GitLab
This change was done under guidance from design recomendations:
Reduce the number of zoom levels to 3/4.
Bug 737189 – Refine list layout, reduce the number of zoom levels
Soon afterwards the 48px size has been reintroduced, going up to 4 options: general: add another zoom level (fd21c947) · Commits · GNOME / Files · GitLab
The work-in-progress designs for the future of the grid view also use only 4 different sizes.
So, we can see there has been a consistent design consensus on the number 4 in this context.
It would be ideal to have a lot of UX research for every design decision, but when such research is not available, I’d rather trust the design experts that have been working on this for quite a long time.
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The number of options is not necessarily the issue here, the size of the options is. There is no advantage in reducing the number of options if it leaves you with unpractical sizes.
I’m happy with only 3-4 options, I only used 67% (default) and 150% (rarely and temporarily) in the past.
Having tried working with 50% and 100% for a bit now, I keep coming to the same conclusion: 50% is too small to work with, 100% is too big to be efficient to work with, requiring much more scrolling back and forth.
If it’s options you want to reduce, please offer a more sane base size, configurable if needed.
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That is a very comprehensive write-up of the whole decision-making progress
While I don’t have any preference on the icon size, I wanted to point something out. In 1968379a Carlos wrote:
Also, following design guidelines, the new zoom levels sizes for icon
view are 64, 96, 128, with default to 96 and 16, 32, 48 for list view,
32 being the default
That sounds like designers intended 64 to be the lowest icon size before 48px was later brought back. So if a size gets axed, to me it would make sense to go back to that previous state of not having 48px. Also considering that average screen resolution has increased since 2015.
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I’d like to echo Peter & thank you for the comprehensive write up as well! It’s really impressive the amount of history there is & how difficult it is for you & the devs to find the right balance.
I personally will leave it at that & as someone who’s inconvenienced by this change (it was really the perfect config size for me & now I have to switch between 2 sizes depending on context) I understand that it’s hard to satisfy everyone, but I also hope that, given the lack of research, the feedback on this thread would serve as real world feedback from real users that you can refer to going forward. UX designers do their best as well, but without data, it’s hard for them to get it right too. I generally find comfort in how well intentioned everyone is