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I would like to delete some images with nautilus.

I increased the size to 200%.

My monitor has a high resolution and the image are too small for me.

I would like to increase the size even more, but it seems to be impossible.

See screenshot.

image thumbnails in Nautilus

Is there a particular reason why increasing beyond 200% is not possible?

Zanna
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guettli
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  • It can go up to 267%. Would that be enough, or are you looking for even larger? – Enterprise Dec 02 '18 at 16:36
  • Is it not possible to use an image viewer instead? It should be possible to "scroll" through images with the forward and back arrow keys, deleting the ones you don't want. The Dolphin file manager can scale thumbnails from 16px up to 256px but even that may not be enough to distinguish between two closely similar images. – DK Bose Dec 02 '18 at 16:39
  • And a similar question was asked here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1081905/ubuntu-file-manager-with-more-zoom – DK Bose Dec 02 '18 at 16:48
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    Does this answer your question? Nautilus Thumbnails Size Fix – vanadium Dec 14 '19 at 10:36
  • @vanadium maybe this work by using dconf. But that is nothing that my grandma would understand. An simple solution would be nice. – guettli Dec 16 '19 at 11:47
  • Don't worry. The setting is not anymore available in more recent nautilus versions, so changing is not directly an option anymore. – vanadium Dec 16 '19 at 12:07
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    With Caja you can get thumbnails as large as you want : https://askubuntu.com/a/1459134/607630 – ChameleonScales Mar 13 '23 at 20:41

3 Answers3

8

  1. Open a terminal and enter the following commands.

    In case you had enabled experimental views in Nautilus, we will first disable it.

    Then we set the desired "standard" icon thumbnail size. In this example, I've set thumbnail icon sizes to 400, but you can set it to whatever you want.

    gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences use-experimental-views false
gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.icon-view thumbnail-size 400

    Note, if you want to make the above changes using a GUI application instead of a terminal, you can disable experimental views in Nautilus' Preferences menu. Also, you can install the package dconf-editor and set both fields using the Dconf Editor's GUI.

  2. Restart

    To make the changes effective kill the Nautius process (or simply restart your computer).

    killall nautilus

  3. Open Nautilus and navigate to the pictures folder you want to view.

  4. Click on the "Icons View" grid in the header bar.

    Click on the "Icons View" grid in the header bar

  5. Here is the thumbnails view with larger icons (100% = 400px). You can still scale them bigger or smaller from the new large default size you had set in step 1.

    Nautilus with larger thumbnails icons

Enterprise
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  • Where this dconf/gsettings registry hack was documented? Please provide a link to official documentation. – N0rbert Dec 02 '18 at 19:58
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    You can query gsettings for the key description: gsettings describe org.gnome.nautilus.icon-view thumbnail-size... "The default size of an icon for a thumbnail in the icon view when using NAUTILUS_ICON_SIZE_STANDARD size." – Enterprise Dec 02 '18 at 20:33
  • Nice! In step 2, terminating and restarting Nautilus instead of rebooting work well. – pomsky Dec 03 '18 at 05:26
  • This solution is too much typing for my grandma – guettli Dec 06 '18 at 15:27
  • An edit and an upvote! That's exactly what I was going to say! ;-) – Fabby Dec 07 '18 at 22:08
  • This works and should become the accepted answer. It is enough to fully quit nautilus (killall nautilus) to have the change in effect on the next start. Side effect is that your icons do not scale accordingly. – vanadium Dec 09 '18 at 11:29
  • Thanks for the killall nautilus suggestion. I've added it to step #2. – Enterprise Dec 09 '18 at 17:07
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    Sometime between 18.04 and 19.10 the thumbnail-size key seems to have been dropped – shay Dec 14 '19 at 01:58
7

Almost always modern glossy GNOME use strange non-intuitive methods for simple problems.
Seems to be limited by design.
You can see other snap problem as a good example of modern Nautilus "design".

It is time to switch to MATE or Cinnamon with their file-managers

  • Caja

    Caja on Ubuntu MATE 18.04.1 LTS

  • Nemo

    Nemo on Ubuntu MATE 18.04.1 LTS

as both they have 400% zoom.

IMHO: if you want to use computer for work without bells and whistles - do not use GNOME at all.

N0rbert
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    If I ever switch away from Kubuntu, it would be to Ubuntu Mate. I have the minimal install of 18.10 in a VM and it's extremely user-friendly. – DK Bose Dec 02 '18 at 16:53
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    you said "if you want to use computer for work without bells and whistles - do not use GNOME at all." I want it to be simple and flexible. Thank you for your hint. I will have a look at Mate. – guettli Dec 02 '18 at 19:56
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    Not an answer to the question – vanadium Dec 09 '18 at 11:28
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    @vanadium True this isn't an answer to the question but it is valid as a "Frame Challenge" as I just learned about yesterday: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1098530/calculator-in-human-readable-format/1099283#1099283 – WinEunuuchs2Unix Dec 09 '18 at 17:47
  • Note: both caja and nemo have a dconf setting for custom thumbnail size if you want them really big (Nautilus doesn't have it anymore), but on nemo it's very buggy and unusable (at least on my XFCE system), whereas on caja it works fine. – ChameleonScales Nov 05 '22 at 02:39
  • I tried to give the most complete answer for todays file managers : https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/723732/220711 – ChameleonScales Mar 28 '23 at 11:02
  • On my Ubuntu 22.04, the 400% zoom picture icons of caja have the same size as the 267% zoom of nautilus. – HD189733b Apr 30 '23 at 08:27
4

Here is a script that is easier for "grandma" to use:

zoom - Script to set Nautilus Thumbnail size

#!/bin/bash

# NAME: zoom
# DESC: Change nautilus thumbnail size based on parameter 1
#       For Ask Ubuntu question: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1097934
#       /nautilus-show-images-with-more-than-200-size

# DATE: December 7, 2018

if [[ $# -ne 1 ]]; then
    echo "Usage: 'zoom 999'" 
    echo "Where 999 is zoom factor, eg 400 = 400% zoom"
    exit 1
fi

gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.icon-view thumbnail-size "$1"
nautilus -q

exit 0

Installation and Usage

Place the file zoom in your search path.

Mark the file executable with chmod a+x /search-path-name/zoom

Call the script from terminal using zoom 999 where 999 is the zoom factor. For example zoom 400 will have nautilus zoom by 400%.

The script can be enhanced to use zenity for a desktop shortcut with GUI pop up window that prompts for zoom percentage.

WinEunuuchs2Unix
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    Grandma does not know how to create a script with gedit or vim. She does not know the command chmod(). She has old and weak eyes and all she wants is to see her grandson baby smile. – guettli Dec 07 '18 at 15:24
  • The bash script is an easy method of changing zoom factor over 200%. After one-time setup, to copy and paste above script, you won't have to type "hard to remember" commands in the terminal. I was mislead by the "grandma" comments because I thought you were going to set this up on her computer. – WinEunuuchs2Unix Dec 07 '18 at 15:36
  • You are right. You can always walk around obstacles. Usability means for me "don't make me think". Maybe I should buy a commercial os for my grandma. – guettli Dec 07 '18 at 15:40
  • @guettli types the script for granny, sends it as an attachment in email, tells her to save in ~/bin and types the chmod next time he visits granny. ;-) – Fabby Dec 07 '18 at 22:11
  • This is still too complicated. This question received 8 up-votes. For me this means that there are other people who would like to increase the size of images even more. Is there no way to fix the root of the problem? – guettli Dec 10 '18 at 09:04
  • @guettli For me using zoom 1000 increases 1000 % easily. The next step to make it easier would be to create desktop shortcut and GUI pop-up window to get the zoom factor. After that the final step would be to download Nautilus source code and patch it. – WinEunuuchs2Unix Dec 10 '18 at 13:34
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    @guettli Wouldn't it be much easier if you open the image with image viewer? Navigate with arrow key and delete with Delete key. You gotta see the image in full screen or a maximized window, albeit you can only delete the images one by one. Though, it can be argued if you enlarge the thumbnails large enough you'll only can see them two or three at a time. – aasril Dec 11 '18 at 03:04
  • @aasril yes, I could use a different application. But why? Why not show the images bigger? What are the developers afraid of? – guettli Dec 11 '18 at 09:21
  • Unfortunately I get the output 'No such key “thumbnail-size”', in Ubuntu 22.04. @aasril, one can embed custom thumbnails with MP4 file on Linux. Image view apps like Geeqie is not an option. – gimmegimme Mar 01 '23 at 00:41