For me personally new “deep search” functionality (CTRL+F) introduced in Files (aka. nautilus) when typing inside window is most annoying “feature” to date.
I do use multi OS on daily basis, due to my work, and both Finder (OsX) and Explorer (Windows) do support type select functionality but apparently Nautilus is an exception.
But this entry is not about me venting, it’s about writing solution to bring that functionality back !
Warning: I’m not author of this patch and don’t take credits for it.
Disclaimer: Tested on Debian 8.5 Jessie + GNOME 3.14.1, Nautilus version 3.14.1.
How to do that?
I. Get necessary files.
1. install all necessary dependences
sudo apt-get build-dep nautilus
2. download source of nautilus, source will be unpacked in current directory, can be run as normal user
apt-get source nautilus
3. download patch, thanks to the courtesy of gentlemen Daniel Wyatt old functionality can be restored.
Patch that I used, and still testing, can be found here.
or as attachment to this post: 0001-Restore-type-ahead-find-interactive-search-as-an-opt.patch.tar
Download it, extract and move to ./nautilus directory.
II. compilation
0. cd into root nautilus directory
cd /path/to/nautilus-3.14.1
1. applying downloaded patch, move extracted patch file to root nautilus directory with will be ./nautilus-3.14.1, i.e. /home/[user_name]/nautilus-3.14.1 and issue:
patch -p 1 < 0001-Restore-type-ahead-find-interactive-search-as-an-opt.patch
Check for errors.
2. configure & compile, use -j [thread number] to speed up compilation
./configure
make -j 9
3. install newly compiled nautilus, invoke as root
sudo make install
4. enable type-ahead select functionality
gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences enable-interactive-search false
5. reboot and test
I would like again thank Daniel Wyatt for sharing this patch as it’s for me personally life saver.