Is it possible to duplicate a file or folder in nautilus directly?

Question

As of right now, if I want to duplicate a folder or file, I right click on it, choose 'copy', click on nautilus itself to change focus from current folder/file, right click somewhere else and choose 'paste'.

Is it possible to duplicate a folder or file directly, like through a 'right click' -> 'duplicate' in nautilus?

@AdityaPatil Hahah. Yah. Am a touchpad user and not a keyboard user. That's why. — Parto, Apr 08 '14 at 11:21
You can also CTRL + drag a file/folder to create a copy. But that would require keyboard input, I guess. — Glutanimate, Apr 08 '14 at 11:38
@Glutanimate Wow, didn't even know zat. It's awesome. Pressing just one key doesn't make me 'a keyboard guru' :-) — Parto, Apr 08 '14 at 11:50

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

Inbuilt shortcut

You can drag files while holding down CTRL to copy them.

Keyboard independent solution using a Nautilus script

Here's a short Nautilus script that should cover your use case:

#!/bin/bash
#Nautilus script to duplicate selected files/folders

while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do

    echo "$# file(s)/folder(s) left to duplicate."
    ORIGINALITEM="$1"    
    DUPLICATEITEM="${ORIGINALITEM} (copy)"
    cp -r "$ORIGINALITEM" "$DUPLICATEITEM"
    shift

done
echo "Done."

Installation instructions

Note: This is a very simple script and will fail if a duplicate file of the same naming scheme already exists in the same directory. It's also not as elegant as the naming Nautilus does by default ( (copy) is inserted after the extension).

Is it possible to duplicate a file or folder in nautilus directly?

1 Answers1