If you’ve upgraded your system to 10.04 “Lucid Lynx“, then you may have noticed one of two possible things with the “Location Bar” in Nautilus: you either only have “breadcrumbs” (those navigation buttons above the folder contents) or an “address bar” where you can enter text to browse to another folder. There used to be a very handy toggle button to the left, but in their infinite wisdom the developers have chosen to remove it.
Most disgruntled users seem to be complaining that they’re left with “ugly” and “useless” breadcrumbs, whereas they’d prefer to have the address bar, so they can type addresses. For me and many others, it was the other way around, as those breadcrumbs are invaluable for jumping back or forward many folders with one click, and the address bar is occasionally handy for typing or pasting in a path. Actually, I was constantly using the toggle button, since while breadcrumbs were fine for much of my browsing, I did a lot of copying of folder paths for various tasks, as well as pasting paths to system folders for system hacks I found online.
Since there is no longer a toggle button, users with only breadcrumbs will need to hit Ctrl+L to show the text-entry address bar (and Esc to go back to breadcrumbs) You can also hit the / key and it will show the address bar, but empty (well, except for it beginning with “/“), ready for you to type or paste an address (so if you want to copy the address of the current folder, use Ctrl+L). Note that once you refresh a window, it will go back to breadcrumbs, so if you want to make it stick as the default, use the tip at the end of this article.
If you’re stuck with the address bar, you might find Ctrl+L does nothing to bring back your beloved breadcrumbs. For this, you’ll have to hack a Gnome setting, so open Applications > System Tools > Configuration Editor (or Alt+F2 and enter gconf-editor). Once open, browse to /apps/nautilus/preferences/, and in the right pane you will notice the option “always_use_location_entry”, so untick that to reset it to breadcrumbs. You can then use Ctrl+L for when you need the address bar, and click the Reload button to get back the breadcrumbs once finished. Note that currently clicking Reload doesn’t always bring back the breadcrumbs, but if you browse to another folder, or use your Back/Forward buttons, the “Location Bar” will then be reset.
For those wanting to make the address bar view the default, you’ll find that there is no tick next to “always_use_location_entry”, so when you tick it your “Location Bar” will be a text-entry address bar from then onwards.
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If you’d like it to default to location entry (address bar), you can always take the easy option and paste the following command into a terminal:
gconftool-2 --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_location_entry --type=bool
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Thanks that was helpful.
Sure except that it does not work. I’ve got that checked and the dumb breadcrumb buttons are still there by default. Stupid broken Lucid.
You’re the first person I’ve come across for whom this hasn’t worked. You might want to look into why this is so. I’m assuming you followed all the info outlined in the guide (correctly), so if you haven’t done something like a custom recompile of Nautilus for whatever reason, there is definitely something amiss (besides a general “broken Lucid”).
It doesn’t work for me either. And I don’t have no custom recompile, and I’ve followed all the steps.
:((
Weird. There’s a very small minority of users who experience that, and without more info, it’s hard to help. The problem is, no one knows what info we should be looking for, hehe! Only thing of I can think of to add is that if the gcconf command was used, make sure you did it as one command, since it appears on 2 lines. Other than that… ???
Thank you so much!!
pressing “ctrl+L” open address bar in text mode.
pressing “Esc” go back address bar to buttons mode.
If only they worked universally, hehe. Still can’t believe some brainiac thought it was a good idea to remove the toggle button.
Thank You!
Thanks for the article. Put me solidly in “the buttons are ugly and useless” category. Thankfully this article made my system usable again.
Who let a mac fanboy change all the defaults in ubuntu to assume-the-user-is-an-idiot type UI? So frustrating to have to google then change obscure settings to get my minimize/maximize/close buttons on the right side & get a usable location bar.
Hey, at least you can change things like this to your liking. Not sure about how much Apple let you customise their OS (which you lease), but pretty damned certain you can’t do anything like this with Windows (another OS you pay hundreds to lease, yet are forbidden to alter). I always knew GTK/Metacity themes could be made with buttons on either side, and you had some pretty bland or even ugly ones become popular with Mac users simply because they had the buttons on the left, but I had no idea you could change them around yourself till I was looking through the config editor and stumbled upon the setting. Anyway, I actually haven’t heard much backlash against the Mac-like move for the 10.04 interface, so guess most aren’t too fussed, but personally I was driving myself nuts going to the wrong side of the title bar every time I wanted to minimise, maximise or close a window!
Actually, there’s a very simple way to move the min/max/close to the right w/o using the CL, but new users will most likely not figure this ‘trick’ out, so the point is still valid. 1) Change anything in a theme and it’ll become a ‘custom’ theme, 2)Select any theme that has the controls on the right, 3)Select the custom theme again. Magic.
Unfortunately, after moving them to the right, if you then select a theme that has them on the left, and then go back to your ‘custom’ (or default) theme – they are back on the left again. Annoying. So whenever I test a new theme, if it has the control on the left, I just select a them w/ them on the right, and then my ‘custom’ theme.
Clear as mud? lol.
I can’t figure out why anyone would want those controls on the left. The mouse pointer is usually on the right of the screen because that’s where the scrollbar is for your internet browser and file browser windows.
Yes, obviously you can use themes with buttons where you want them, though unfortunately that doesn’t help people who like their current theme, but want the buttons on the opposite end. And Mac users have buttons on the left, so they applauded this move (which the rest of us didn’t). Luckily you can move buttons where you want with this guide.
Thank you!
Thanks you SO much! Those annoying buttons were driving me nuts.
Thank you very much. :)
Very helpful article.