How can I edit Nautilus Places sidebar and Unity QuickList?

Question

I'm running Ubuntu 13.04 with Nautilus 3.6 and I want to edit the Nautilus Places sidebar menu (Not Bookmarks).

By default have the following items: Recent, Home, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, Videos & Trash.

I wish:

Add folder to Places (Not Bookmarks).

Added Folder must be present in Unity QuickList (Right Click Nautilus icon in Launcher).

Remove Recent files (Default in Nautilus 3.6).

Rename Trash to another name.

how can I achieve these goals?

NOTE: I tried editing ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs file, but not luck. Is there another way to customize Nautilus Places menu?

score 42 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

In order to achieve that.. you should edit the Nautilus source code and the nautilus.desktop file or using another file manager that allows this, such as nemo.

NOTE: In this example I'm running ubuntu 13.04 with nautilus (files) 3.6.3.
You can test this in a virtual machine to see if everything is OK.

1) Make sure you have enable the Source code repository

Open the Ubuntu Software Center
In the Menu Bar choose Edit -> Software Sources. Click to enable "Source code repository". Just in case I use the "Main Server" to Download.

enter image description here

Open a Terminal Window to update the repositories.

sudo apt-get update

2) In the Terminal type the following to install the necessary packages.

sudo apt-get install build-essential quilt

3) Install build dependencies.

sudo apt-get build-dep nautilus

4) Create a folder to download the source code.

mkdir ~/Downloads/src
cd ~/Downloads/src

5) Download the source code & Export variables.

apt-get source nautilus
export QUILT_PATCHES=debian/patches
export EDITOR=gedit

6) Create the patch and edit the source code.

cd nautilus-3.6.3/
quilt new my_custom_places.patch
quilt edit src/nautilus-places-sidebar.c

Custom Trash: To change the name of the Trash.You can change the strings in the lines 567 and 569.

eg: "Trash" to "Custom Trash" & "Open the trash" to "Open the Custom Trash"

enter image description here

Add Folder: In this example I will add the "Test" folder in my home directory /home/virtual/Test. (change the folder according to your needs)

After the line number 562 add the following:

/* add Test directory */
mount_uri = "file:///home/virtual/Test";
icon = g_themed_icon_new (NAUTILUS_ICON_FOLDER);
add_place (sidebar, PLACES_BUILT_IN,
       SECTION_COMPUTER,
       _("Test"), icon, mount_uri,
       NULL, NULL, NULL, 0,
       _("Open Test folder"));
g_object_unref (icon);

enter image description here

Remove Recent Files: To remove the Recent Files from the places... delete the lines from 525 to 534.

enter image description here

Save the changes.

7) Build the deb packages.

quilt refresh
fakeroot dpkg-buildpackage

8) Install the deb packages.

cd ..
sudo dpkg -i *deb

9) For system-wide..edit the nautilus.desktop file to add the folder eg:(/home/virtual/Test) in the quick list.

sudo nano /usr/share/applications/nautilus.desktop

Change:

Actions=Window;

To:

Actions=Test;Window;

Add:

[Desktop Action Test]
Name=Test             
Exec=nautilus --new-window /home/virtual/Test
OnlyShowIn=Unity;

Before:

enter image description here

After:

enter image description here

10) Finally you can logout and Login to see the changes.

RESULT:

enter image description here

Hope this helps.

My version of nautilus is nautilus-3.10.1. In step #6 after I cd nautilus-3.10.1 and then run ls src from there I find that nautilus-places-sidebar.c is not found in the source. Where do I make the changes listed in step #6 above for nautilus 3.10.1 in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS? My goal here is to just add a directory to the places sidebar. — Willoczy, May 21 '14 at 08:20
Just curious whether this is something related to security or not...this is avery elaborate procedure for a relatively straightforward (requirement-wise not implementation) customization feature. — typesanitizer, Aug 25 '14 at 13:40
@Roman Raguet Kindly update the same for Ubuntu 14.04 http://askubuntu.com/questions/516999/create-folders-under-places-in-ubuntu-14-04 — A Umar Mukthar, Sep 12 '14 at 06:15
After 10 years, still no way to do it without touching the source code? — Zorro, Nov 19 '23 at 12:38

score 11 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

11

I found an easy way outlined on SO.

Please follow the instructions outlined in this link - this solved the same problem I had.

Excerpts:

gedit ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs

Remove the list you do not want. However, once you login again, it will reset, so

echo "enabled=false" > ~/.config/user-dirs.conf

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

Community

1

answered Jun 18 '14 at 11:02

Rakesh Sankar

326

cool! a pity is doesnt have the trash folder so I could disable it :) – Aquarius Power Mar 11 '15 at 21:48
Thank you, this is a reasonable answer and works great in 14.04. This is not 1999; I'm done with recompiling my operating system just to make it work! – Lambart Aug 31 '15 at 17:53
1

Also note that you'll need to kill and restart nautilus for these changes to take effect: pkill nautilus should do the trick. – Lambart Aug 31 '15 at 18:09
I don't have a ~/.config/user-dirs.conf and I'm running 14.04. Do I create it? – OneHoopyFrood Oct 20 '15 at 14:08

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Sep 12 '14 at 23:18

2

For nautilus of ubuntu 14.04, you will have to edit gtk3.10, the same way as stated above, as the SideBar functionality was now ported into gtk (so that the file-open dialogue sidebar and the nautilus-sidebar are not separated implementations any more)

edit /gtk/gtkplacessidebar.c

I also tried this http://pastebin.com/K4GcHrz7 in nautilus-window.c, as there is https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkPlacesSidebar.html#gtk-places-sidebar-add-shortcut but get a segfault, not a good (gtk) programmer though.

edited Sep 12 '14 at 23:18

Braiam

67,791
32
179
269

answered Jul 22 '14 at 17:26

crontox

29

pastebin link has been removed! – A Umar Mukthar Sep 12 '14 at 06:01

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 03 '15 at 18:45

2

On my system (Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS), the file you want is found at ~/.config/gtk-3.0/bookmarks Older versions used to keep this in ~/.gtk-bookmarks. Entries are URIs, so filepaths must be absolute and prefixed with file://.

answered Apr 03 '15 at 18:45

Sondra Kinsey

21

1

This is incorrect at best. A red flag should have been thrown when you typed the file names: they share a word with what the OP explicitly stated, he does not want - Not Bookmarks. Please read the question and answers before polluting the global namespace. – Jonny Henly Jul 14 '15 at 06:16

score 0 · Answer 5 · edited Mar 27 '15 at 11:54

0

Just drag and drop the files to the bottom left when at a folder! (Nautilus 2.32.0)

I also posted the screenshots at gonorthwork/view for future archive reference:

enter image description here

edited Mar 27 '15 at 11:54

Pabi

7,401
3
40
49

answered Mar 27 '15 at 11:44

Stephen Elliott

21

How can I edit Nautilus Places sidebar and Unity QuickList?

5 Answers5

NOTE: In this example I'm running ubuntu 13.04 with nautilus (files) 3.6.3.
You can test this in a virtual machine to see if everything is OK.

Linked

Related

How can I edit Nautilus Places sidebar and Unity QuickList?

5 Answers5

NOTE: In this example I'm running ubuntu 13.04 with nautilus (files) 3.6.3. You can test this in a virtual machine to see if everything is OK.

Linked

Related

NOTE: In this example I'm running ubuntu 13.04 with nautilus (files) 3.6.3.
You can test this in a virtual machine to see if everything is OK.