Nautilus per folder view settings

[dyegoaurelio (Dyego)]

Currently the Nautilus view toggle is global, which in most cases makes a lot of sense.

However, would be really useful if there’s some way of explicitly changing the view settings for a folder.

The biggest use case for this feature in my opinion is the Downloads folder.

For example:
I prefer to sort my folders by name and to view them on the grid view.

This makes a lot of sense for pretty much all the folders in my system, and I do agree that when I change the view settings I do expect them to apply to all folders.

However, the Downloads folder is always annoying to me. I always need to change the view settings when going to that folder, since a grid sorted by name doesn’t make sense when viewing it.

So, in my usage, the Downloads folder:

• must be visualized in a different way when comparing to most other directories
• is frequently accessed

This leads me to have to constantly switch back and forth between view configurations, or to just settle with setting that I don’t like during a session.

A much better ux would be:

• set the view settings to something that makes sense to me
• occasionally, when I need more detail or different sorting settings change it.

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This gets even more apparent now that we have Provide FileChooser portal backend (#3401) · Issues · GNOME / Files · GitLab

Since the Downloads folder is a common directory to interact with when using a file picker.

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I know this is highly unlikely to get implemented, but I also would love to also have the ability to group the Downloads folder, like other file managers such as Dolphin allows us to do

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That being said, I’d be happy to implement this feature in way that makes sense to the project if I’ve got approval from the project maintainers/design team.

[Sid]

Refer:

Feature request: Set view display per folder , more view option in file chooser picker

hi, first coming from apple environment , i really like most of the gnome desktop minimalist environment but still there’s 2 things i really don’t get. Will it be difficult to implement an option to set and memorise the way of each folder is displayed instead of changing the display of all folders everytime i changing the display of the current folder ( i really don’t get this option , in what way this is an improvement while browsing files , while i need big preview for images moving to anothe…

[dyegoaurelio (Dyego)]

I understand that we want to keep the current behavior of setting the view settings globally, that makes sense.

What I’m proposing here is to have some way of explicitly setting a view mode for a folder, this maybe could be accomplished with an option in the folder right click menu or something like that.

As I’ve explained in my previous post, I think this could lead to a much better UX.

[gnobuntu]

Thank you @dyegoaurelio for re-opening this discussion. For linking reasons: There was another one three years ago Nautilus remember view - View mode setting should be persistent for each directory -GNOME Discourse
I am happy about any way this can be re-implemented . I can second what wfpoulet wrote on gitlab:" …a user wants to always view some directories by list (example: ~/Projects/src) and others by icons (example: ~/Pictures)."
This feature was part of Nautilus before it was axed more than 10 years ago as mentioned “because of confusion for users, a source of bugs and a maintenance burden”.
Hopefully the implementation can now be in a way that there is less confusion and less of maintenance burden.
Maybe the default could be like it is now, with an option to have the folder view be saved for the users who want that (like @dyegoaurelio proposed).

[gnobuntu]

It looks like there is no opposition to the suggestions so far .

[ebassi (Emmanuele Bassi)]

@gnobuntu

Hopefully the implementation can now be in a way that there is less confusion and less of maintenance burden.

There is no indication that anything has changed in that regard, so: no.

[gnobuntu]

Thank you, @ebassi, for taking time to write your comment!
On the one hand it is good to know that nothing has changed in this regard, on the other hand it is really discouraging. I hoped there will be some positive development regarding this over the many years. I have been really patient as there are some new features of Nautilus I really like. But I can not use it without having a possibility to keep the view settings per folder. It makes work inefficient and I don’t want to click on the change view button many times a day.
I still have a little hope this feature will return sometime. In the meantime I will continue to use Nemo.

[Sid]

While this feature is lucrative, it could easily end up confusing the user if implemented the wrong way (per-folder view settings etc). Primary reason being users would set per folder view for a handful of folders with enthusiasm, and after a while forget which view setting was used for which folder, and this would ultimately lead to frustration, forcing users to fallback to the default view. There is a reason why this feature was removed from 'nautilus' in 2012, and I’m sure lot of thought would have gone while making the decision.

We don’t want to spend a lot of time developing / restoring this feature, only for it to look good on paper with not many users actually using it.

That being said, I do think it would be beneficial to try this idea to 'Downloads' folder alone, with a different UI abstraction. E.g. '[x] Use Smart Download View' as an option in 'Preferences' etc, which would display the 'Downloads' folder as shown in image in the original post above, which sounds reasonable. That would address the main issue raised here, while not letting users to shoot themselves in the foot with per-folder view settings.

[dyegoaurelio (Dyego)]

Thanks for the response!

I would be fine implementing the feature only for the Downloads folder and it would solve my personal issue.

However, I do feel like this could cause some frustration for users that may want to use the custom view elsewhere, like the Screenshots folder.

But I do agree that this could cause confusion if someone set it up on multiple folders and forgets about it afterwards, so limiting the feature to the Downloads folder for now could be a nice compromise.

[Sid]

@dyegoaurelio

But I do agree that this could cause confusion if someone set it up on multiple folders and forgets about it afterwards, so limiting the feature to the Downloads folder for now could be a nice compromise.

This idea needs feedback from nautilus developers and the design team.

[gnobuntu]

@Sid Thanks a lot for responding and being willing to explore options! This is really encouraging.

I wonder whether it makes sense to only allow the per-folder-view for only one folder, e.g. Downloads, as @dyegoaurelio hinted. It may also be easier to introduce it for all folders (less or similar amount of work) but with the default setting to have this disabled as it seems that this feature can confuse some users.
Nemo has a option in the settings Ignore per-folder view preferences and this could be on per default in the upgraded Nautilus. Users that would like to switch to the per-folder-view could actively untick it and know then what they chose and won’t be surprised about the effect.

Personally I don’t have the grid view for the Downloads folder but use it for most subfolders in the Pictures folder and sometimes in the Video subfolders. If the per-folder view is only introduced for the Downloads folder, I could still not switch to Nautilus. Other users have also expressed this request, e.g. wfpoulet wrote " …a user wants to always view some directories by list (example: ~/Projects/src) and others by icons (example: ~/Pictures)."

Thanks again for listening!