I would like to customize the nautilus sidebar items more (refer to screenshot, I mean the items from Recent to Trash.
I am coming from the famously restrictive MacOS. Yet, in MacOS it is entirely possible to add, remove or rename any item in the sidebar of the pendant “Finder”. I could not imagine why this wouldn’t be allowed in the rather more free “Linux” world.
I found some instructions mentioning to edit ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs, which does work for some, but not all items, and apart of that, seems a bad idea since it also breaks features (example, if removing the Templates path it also removes the actual assignement of that folder)
Apparently it is suggested to use Bookmarks instead, which is just nowhere the same as editing the sidebar items. It creates a huge mess in the sidebar since one canot differentiate actual external drives (I connect to about 30 servers using nautilus and they are all in the “bookmarks” section as such), plus I have several custom folders that I access very often and on mac had them nicely placed on the sidebar in favour of some less often used ones.
I would be fine with keeping the ones nautilus generously thinks are so useful to me (they are not, not everyone listens music, watches videos), if I could add my own on top.
I feel I am missing something - I cannot even reorder the default items!
Am I wrongly assuming Linux to be a rather “free” OS where the user is in control and can customise the system
They even use MacOS and Windows file manager as an example.
You can, of course, forked Nautilus and change the way sidebar looks. It’s the point of the Free, as in Freedom, which doesn’t mean every app doesn’t have set default design.
The first link is exactly what I refer to, editing ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs, which unfortunately not only does not really work but also appears to be a bad idea as it removes more than just the sidebar entry.
I can see the dev’s of Nautilus do know about the issue - indeed the macOS settings proposed as a “insipiration” seems like a good way to me.
I clearly misunderstood the freedom clause as in “you can customize”, which I got to understand as a “you can customize if you know how to”
I think forking nautilus might be over my head, seems like written in C, which I understand not(hing) much about (python/php ok)
Guess I will have to wait and see what the dev’s come up with.
It’s mostly an effort to enforce Libadwaita/GTK4/GNOME HIG design, so that every apps, especially GNOME Core Apps and Circle apps looks consistent across the board.
This led to controversies where some people that believe “Linux is supposed to be customizable” outright hated GNOME.
GNOME has been doubling down with this policy with Libadwaita.
I personally agree with GNOME decisions. Consistent and solid design foundation attracts users and developer.
ps. you can probably use alternative file manager which has additional customization options, but I couldn’t recommend you anything because I haven’t been using anything else but Nautilus for the past 5 years or so.
Yea, I looked at other browsers and they did not appeal in terms of functionality I need, and I can live with the design flaws I guess. Or decisions, if one wants to call them that.
I did also notice the entire “lock down” approach which seems to be a thing. I have stumbled on it while trying to create an app for my install that did not exist and was naive enough to think I should develop it with the most “modern” approach (which would have been libadwaita and gtk4)
I gave up on that due to the absolute lack of possibilities and instead used PyQT5 which even allowed me to make the app cross platform compatible, not just gnome/linux.
I guess it is all good with standards, as long the standards do no stop the user from using the system.
Even macOS gets that - which is probably the definition of “locked in standards” in the software world.
Standards do not mean remove power - it just means to remove the mess of going to the goal in a thousand ways, and provide one solid way instead.
It does not appear to me either gtk4 or libadwaita do that (also with in mind several discussions I had read about this and the past debacle about x vs wayland, which appears a similar standoff between “newer, safer, better” and “older, more better, actually working, but someone did not like it”)
Anyway, totally going offtopic, sorry , will show myself out
Thanks again for the suggestions and links, it did help to get at least some hope
