Add a type-to-seek mode
Add a type-to-seek mode
This is a duplicate of issue #590 (closed), but since the issue is locked I can't comment on that. I like to revive this discussion. Such a mode is very important for me and I miss it in nautilus. Anyway: I think that this proposal didn't make it, mainly because it was formulated a little bit unprofessionally, and I think that's a shame. I like to do better, here we go:
Reasons for a type-to-seek mode
TL;DR
- The search isn't a substitute for type-to-seek
- Disabling sub-folder search is not an option
- type-to-seek is fast, search is slow
- type-to-seek as default,
Ctrl
+F
for search - common for windows users
- type-to-seek as optional setting
in-depth
-
The type-to-seek mode enables valuable workflows and the search is not a substitute. Here's why:
type-to-seek does not change the directory view as the search does, type-to-seek only jumps to a file and marks the file at the same time. The Search, on the other hand, suddenly shows search results. This is bad if you want to mark other files of the same directory in the next step, because the current directory is not displayed any more, but search results. Another example is when you want to drag and drop a file after finding it, same problem.
-
Subfolders. There is a setting to en- or disable searching sub-folders. But that's not enough, because you properly need both. The type-to-seek mode is limited to the current directory level.That's good because in many cases the user only wants to jump to a file, and she/he doesn't want search results from sub-folders also displayed. Those are not not interesting at the moment. To make matters worse, those search results can contain multiple files with the same name (because they come form sub-folders). Which one is from the current directory? That can be very confusing. In the Search, on the other hand, it is mostly intended to get results from sub-folders. So disabling that setting isn't a permanent solution.
-
Type-to-seek is always fast, but the search can be slow. For example, folders with a large amount of files or SMB-drives. Imagine the following situation: The user is looking at a remote directory over SMB and she or he would like to jump to a file named 'foo'. The user presses the key
F
, and a recursive search request is triggered. This SMB-request is taking a very long time and nautilus becomes non-responsive. After the user has waited enough, she/he pushes the keyO
. Another search-request is triggered and so on. However, type-to-seek would come in handy in such a situation, because the directory is already displayed and there is no need for an additional search-request. That applies on other situations to, like many files on slow SD-cards, old computers and so on. -
You can have both. If type-to-seek were the default, you could activate the search without the mouse by pressing
Ctrl
+F
, or with the mouse or touch by clicking on the search button.Ctrl
+F
is very common and the button is very intuitive. If that were the case, a great search UX would remain in my humble opinion. -
Type-to-seek is also a Windows Explorer feature. People who are used to MS Windows are maybe going to miss that feature on Linux distributions with nautilus.
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Even if you (the maintainer and devs) are saying that type-to-search in Nautilus should remain as the default, I think large parts of the community would appreciate type-to-seek at least as an optional setting.
Thank you for reading everything.