I know about the feature but haven’t had a need or use for it.
If I had a use for it I’d say it’s maybe not very discoverable or intuitive. The user has to guess they can click the icon to change it. I don’t find that this is covered in the help.
I don’t know what the use case is for changing a file’s icon—all my files except for plain text and code files already have a thumbnail.
Thanks for sharing your case!
Looks like music albums are a relevant case we could try to handle automatically.
(Technical details: we might be able to borrow code from here src/gst/totem-gst-pixbuf-helpers.c · master · GNOME / totem · GitLab)
I agree on this. I discovered that it is possible to change the icon long ago by clicking by accident. Maybe an overlay above the image with a text that says “Change” would show the feature more clearly?
This suggests me something missing at the moment: When no icon attribute was set by the user Nautilus could be free to guess custom icons (e.g. the cover of an album), but when the icon attribute was set by the user Nautilus should stick to that.
Also this. Personally I believe that system icons and home icons should be shown first (in an icon picker), and then an option that says “Pick a custom icon” should allow to select any other file. But that is because I would always prefer images aesthetically designed to work well as icons. Others might disagree.
I knew about it since the GNOME 2 days,. I use it a lot, mainly for two things:
I can try to provide screenshots, if that’s useful?
Only for directories in my use cases.
I love that it helps me find stuff instantly, as each item becomes visually distinct from the neighbours and tells me what content to expect. I also love that it makes directories generally more appealing.
I dislike that it’s Nautilus specific and that the file chooser doesn’t show the custom icons to me. It would be useful in cases like browsing to add music in Amberol. If the recent discussions to turn Nautilus into the filechooser end up being implemented, that might get solved as a side effect.
It’s not doing much at the moment, but I started working on a thing.
No. And… I mostly use the terminal, and open Nautilus specifically to have thumbnails to browse my photos.
I used that feature a looooong time ago (I think it was back in GNOME 2.x times…) on some folders.
But I stopped using it because it made those folders look like simple documents, which I find confusing.
I like to use custom icon themes, and sometimes even make custom icons with the intention to use them this way. I’ve used it to change a thumbnail, and I like how I get the final say on what is getting displayed in my file browser
maybe some helpful text hints could make the feature more obvious.
Did you know about the feature?
Yes, but I didn’t realize it worked for files too.
Did you ever use the feature?
Yes - I change the icons of select few folders to make them easier to see at a glance.
Did you ever use it for changing the thumbnail of a file?
Did that file already have a thumbnail before?
I used similar feature on Windows to change some shortcut icons. Usually they have generic shortcut icon, but there were times when they already had icon, but it was too generic or not distinct enough.
What do you love about this feature?
It makes me more productive and it is easy to use.
What do you dislike or miss regarding this feature?
It is hard to discover.
Were these shortcuts pointing at folders or something else?
Are links in linux better than windows shortcuts in this regard? Did you ever find the need to change icon of a link? (And if so, was it a link to a folder or something else?)
Were these shortcuts pointing at folders or something else?
Both - sometimes I already had shortcut and other times I created them just so I can set custom icon, since as far as I know Windows Explorer doesn’t allow easily changing the icon.
Are links in linux better than windows shortcuts in this regard? Did you ever find the need to change icon of a link? (And if so, was it a link to a folder or something else?)
I don’t remember ever creating a shortcut on linux, but I’m not a heavy linux user - I mostly use it as intrnet machine or for some light work. Does Nautilus even allow creating shortcuts?
Interesting. What types of files would you change the icon of? E.g. Text documents, etc.?
It’s optional. It can be enabled in the Preferences.
Usually links to small utilities that are part of software package, but not deemed important enough to have their own icon. On linux that can be done with desktop file. Less often links to documents, but it happens.
Generally I do it when a have bunch of files that are part of (logical) collection and I need to access a few specific ones regularly, but not too often. For folders it is the other way around - I usually have a small number that I access regularly and I want them to look distinct.
I expected it to work in a similar way to copy\move - you hold a special key when dragging to the target location and it changes the action. The way it works now means I have to first create it in the same place and then move it, but it may not be possible if the original location is read-only or you don’t have permissions.
The way it works now means I have to first create it in the same place and then move it, but it may not be possible if the original location is read-only or you don’t have permissions.
Ctrl + M pastes a link to a copied item. It’s in the Keyboard Shortcuts.
Related to the topic - I used the emblems for similar purpose.
Did you know about the feature?
Yes.
Did you ever use the feature?
Yes.
Did you ever use it for changing the thumbnail of a file?
No, I just changed thumbnails of directories. All the directories containing my music albums.
Did that file already have a thumbnail before?
No, I replaced default folder icons by albums cover.
What do you love about this feature?
Being able to customize folder icons using gio was nice. Easily integrated into a Python script.
What do you dislike or miss regarding this feature?
I used to expose my music both through SFTP and SAMBA. The feature requires to update the thumbnails for URIs with the two corresponding schemes smb and sftp. Also I didn’t find how to have the thumbnails being shared between users of my system (me and my two sons). Thus decided to stop maintaining the Python script that updated the thumbnails…
For directories, may be there could be an option (for folders only) that would generate a custom icon using the images contained in the folder or the custom icons of the children folders… A very niche feature but would enrich any music library since artist folders would automatically have a custom icon…
So, I didn’t know about this feature at all. It seems like something that I might have played with in the GNOME 2 days, but I’ve never found a purpose for it.
One of the main problems with this feature for me is that the directories where I would find it useful are NFS shares from my NAS, which I use on multiple computers… and the icons I set on one computer don’t show up on the other computers.
The other thing is that I rely on the icon to identify which things in Nautilus are folders, so I don’t want to make folders look like files or vice-versa. For folders, it would be nice to be able to select from a pre-set list of alternate folder icons (color variations, or different symbols like the XDG directories have) instead of needing to pick an image file.
I think I would prefer to be able to use emblems to indicate special files or folders instead of changing the entire icon.
I use different coloured copies of the default folder icon to indicate certain types of folder, like “Urgent” and “Past Urgent”.
So just recolouring the default folder, the icon itself stays the same.
I store these folder icons in /Pictures/Icons
I tried in a dot file location but hiding/rehiding when poking about locating them is a faff.
I’ve been aquiring the knowledge to use python-nautilus to make a context menu where I can choose the folder colour, to make it quick and easy.
For me, changing the folder colour is a hack to try and get back some of the usefulness of the old MacOS Finder tags. It would be nice to also add tags, and search and sort by them.
I find using bitmaps on folders makes it too easy to confuse them with normal image files in the grid view, as I’m used to OS where files hide their extensions.
I don’t use custom icons on normal files, as in grid view most of them have thumbnails, apart from text files. Text file thumbnails would be a blessing.
That makes me remember that there are a few PDFs I’ve wanted to change the generated thumbnail icon on in the past, because the default one is blank or non-descriptive, but havn’t because I didn’t have a process to create a thumbnail and then keep the two in sync.
Cheers.
This is really great and useful feedback material. We can see some relevant patterns emerging. Thanks everyone! And let’s keep it going.
I know about this feature and I don’t use it since I don’t need it.
I have feeling current design of this feature makes it hard to find and hard to use. You need to click on the thumbnail/icon in properties dialog — there is no indication what will happen after that. The UI looks like it was implemented in the older times when GNOME was not design-driven as much as today.
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