fedora-nautilus-typeahead

Automatically builds a GNOME Files (Nautilus) RPM with type-ahead functionality for Fedora Linux.

✨ A Copr is available to automate installing and updating the package.

📦 The resulting RPMs are also listed for download in the Releases page.

• Supported Fedora versions: 39, 40, 41 (Workstation/Silverblue).
• Supported Nautilus versions: 45.2.1, 46.2, 47.0.

Description

The default behavior on Nautilus nowadays is to type to search, i.e., to start a search when typing a character. This package simply applies a pre-existing patch developed by the community to restore the type-ahead functionality, i.e., browsing/navigating on key press, the default behavior on many file managers.

The new functionality may be toggled on the Preferences window (Search on type ahead):

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Install package

To install this package via Copr, first enable the repository on your system with:

dnf copr enable nelsonaloysio/nautilus-typeahead

Alternatively, download or build the package from source before following the next steps.

On Fedora Workstation

To install the package on Fedora Workstation, use the following command:

dnf install nautilus-typeahead

Note: if installing from a local package, replace nautilus-typeahead with ./nautilus-typeahead-*.rpm.

On Fedora Silverblue

To layer the package on Fedora Silverblue, use the following command:

rpm-ostree override remove nautilus --install nautilus-typeahead

Note: if installing from a local package, replace nautilus-typeahead with ./nautilus-typeahead-*.rpm.

Restart your machine in order to boot into the updated deployment.

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Build from source

Simply run the script to install prerequisites with dnf, patch Nautilus, and build the RPM with:

bash build-nautilus-typeahead-rpm.sh

A new file nautilus-typeahead-*.rpm will be created by the end of the process.

Note: on Silverblue, it is required to run the command above inside a toolbox to obtain the required dependencies using dnf, avoiding the need to layer them on your base system.

Clean up dependencies

After building the RPM file, any installed dependencies may be removed with:

dnf history undo $(dnf history list --reverse | tail -n1 | cut -f1 -d\|)

The command above will simply undo the changes made by the last dnf execution.

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Notes

• ❓ For more information on the issue, please check the corresponding ticket (one of many) on GitLab.

• 📝 Patch file sources: 47.0, 46.2, 46.1, 45.2.1.

• ❤️ Thanks to all contributors responsible for developing and maintaining the type-ahead patch to restore this functionality to Nautilus!

Contributors

Last updated on August, 2024.

• Contributor (original patch code): Jan de Groot jgc@archlinux.org
• Contributor (original package maintainer): Ian Hernández badwolfie@archlinux.info
• Contributor (updated Xavier's patch for 43.2): Bryan Lai bryanlais@gmail.com
• Contributor (updated Xavier's patch for 44.1): DragoonAethis dragoon@dragonic.eu
• Contributor (fix for backspace going to parent folder): Jeremy Bicha jbicha@debian.org
• Contributor (current patch code): Xavier Claessens xavier.claessens@collabora.com
• AUR maintainer: Albert Vaca Cintora albertvaka@gmail.com
• PPA maintainer: Lubomir Brindza lubomir@brindza.sk