3

When using the "Open File"-dialog in Ubuntu (e.g. in a text-editor like vscode or sublime), I'm used to being able to navigate and select folders/files by typing. Since updating to Ubuntu 20.04, however, a very slow search dialog opens up instead of immediately selecting the files.

I'm aware of the same type of behavior in the nautilus "Files" browser, and I solved this with nautilus-typeahead. This did not influence the "Open File"-dialog, however. How can I go back to the much faster alternative of selecting instead of searching in this dialog?

Note, I found that this behavior exists in most programs I tried (sublime, vscode, slack, ...), but not in all for some reason (inkscape was an exception - here the dialog looks very different as well).

fromGiants
  • 149
  • May I ask where you were used to this? Search instead of typeahead for the file chooser has been the default for over a decade now on all operating systems, including Ubuntu. – mchid Oct 22 '22 at 17:13

2 Answers2

2

This is difficult to change, and would require changing the source code.

In Ubuntu, you mostly see GTK dialogs. These are the standard dialogs of the underlying GTK toolkit. Many programs, even programs based on a different toolkit such as QT, can and do use them.

The behavior in the file manager nautilus and in the GTK file dialogs has changed from type-ahead search, which matches the first letters of the filename to a search function that narrows down the list to names matching the search string. The latter is useful if you do not remember the correct first letters, and also in user cases where you have filenames starting with a date.

It is difficult to reverse this new direction the developers have taken. As you indicate, some developers publish a nautilus version where type-ahead is introduced again. The same, i.e., editing source code, would be required to change GTK dialogs as well.

vanadium
  • 88,010
0

All you have to do is press CTRL+L to search non-recursively or press the / or . key to begin typing the full path to the file.

mchid
  • 43,546
  • 8
  • 97
  • 150