Hi all. Sorry if this is a stupid question. I’m using Gnome and trying to set a default set of columns for list view in Files (40.2). The help and everything I can find online says:
# Files list columns preferences There are eleven columns of information that you can display in the Files list view. Click the menu button in the top-right corner of the window, select Preferences and choose the List Columns tab to select which columns will be visible.
There is no option for List Columns in preferences for me, only General, Option Context Menu Actions, Performance & Icon View Captions. I can set it in the view options for the folder I’m viewing but it seems to only save for that folder. Am I losing it?
So hopefully I understand you correctly. But if you want to change to see more column selections, you first have to change Files view from Gird (default) to List. For that simply look at the top right of Files and click the second button to the left of the Files settings button. If you hover over it, the tooltip will say “Show List” and click that. Then your Files will look like mine from the screenshot above. Next thing, where my mouse pointer is in the screenshot is right along the “Name” bar and if I right click within that, I get more selections to choose from like Size, Type, Owner, Created, Modified, Location, Group, etc. If that is what I think you’re looking for than you should be all set after that. I’d show you a screenshot of that, but it doesn’t recognize right click menus within the screenshot tool oddly enough. Hopefully that is what you’re looking for!
So if you added more selections it could look like this:
Thank you for taking the time to look at this for me. I have manged to do what you have suggested however these settings do not apply to all folder. As soon as I click out to a different path it goes back to the default of Name, Size, Modified, Star(not all seem to have star though)
From what I remember, Files is set to remember each Folder’s own individual view options. So that’s why it’s not one single uniform view set for everything. One folder could be sorted by name, another folder could be sorted by last modified files, each folder remembers it’s own individual view type. There may be a way to change that or it might be a feature the Gnome devs got rid of some versions ago, I can’t quite remember exactly since I’ve always just used it how the default folder view is setup. Or it could just be as simple as changing a gsettings value somewhere. I’ll do a little searching and see if I can find out or figure out a little bit more.
After some searching I found what I was looking for, but unfortunately it’s not good news. If you check out Gnome’s Gitlab, there was a merge request from about a year ago to request a feature that is essentially what you want to do. You may view the comments here: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/-/merge_requests/478
Like I said unfortunately, that merge request was never done, so there’s no way in Files to do what you’re thinking. It used to function that way many years ago, but various version changes later they got rid of it. If you don’t mind being a little patient, you can change the view type of the most common folders you access so that what it feels a bit more uniform, but that does require you changing each folders view. But once you do it for say the Pictures folder, you won’t have to do it again, but you’ll have to do it for say your Downloads folder too, or like I mentioned whatever other folders you think you’d access most frequently, I’d use tho. Sorry it’s not the answer your looking for, but I hope that at least sheds some light on the matter.
Yeah some of the help documentation is lacking, not updated or honestly forgotten. But I’m happy to have helped you out, even if it was only just a little bit. Welcome to EndeavourOS btw also!
Open dconf-editor (if not installed, install it via pamac or yay -S dconf-editor)
Move to /org/gnome/nautilus/list-view/
There you will find the options default-column-order and default-visible-columns.
In default-column-order you can find all the names of the possible columns and in default-visible-columns you can save your default by unchecking using default and entering whatever you want as default columns.
It’s a very handy and helpful community here. Good luck with your setup (I use Gnome too) and if you have any other questions, feel free to ask. Happy you were able to fix your issue
