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Nautilus

lastmod 2026-02-06created 2020-10-3113 edits

Nautilus is the official file manager of the GNOME desktop. The name comes from the shell of the nautilus (the English word for the chambered nautilus), which stands for an operating system shell. Nautilus replaced Midnight Commander in GNOME 1.4 and has been the default since version 2.0.

Nautilus was the flagship product of the now-defunct company Eazel. Under the GNU LGPL, Nautilus is free software.

How to install

ArchLinux: 

$ sudo pacman -S nautilus

Connect to Server

WebDAV

To connect to the WebDAV protocol over HTTPS, change the https:// part to davs://. 

davs://file.server-project.com/remote.php/dav/files/yourname

How to add a bookmark 

echo "file:///home/$(whoami)/Project" >> ~/.config/gtk-3.0/bookmarks

XDG standard directories

Defines the XDG standard directories. The default directories shown in the sidebar (Documents, Downloads, etc.) 

/etc/xdg/user-dirs.defaults

To apply them per user, you need to run xdg-user-dirs-update. This command writes them to ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs.

Caveats:

  • XDG standard directories (DESKTOP, DOCUMENTS, DOWNLOAD, etc.) only recognize fixed keys. PROJECT is non-standard, so it may not appear automatically in the Nautilus sidebar.
  • xdg-user-dirs-update ignores keys it does not recognize.

Changing icons

Folder icons are changed with GIO metadata: 

# 커스텀 아이콘 설정 (아이콘 파일 경로)
gio set ~/Project metadata::custom-icon file:///path/to/icon.png

# 또는 시스템 테마 아이콘 이름 사용
gio set ~/Project metadata::custom-icon-name folder-development

It can also be done through the GUI in Nautilus:

  • Right-click the ~/Project folder → Properties
  • Click the folder icon at the top left → choose the image you want

This setting is stored in ~/.local/share/gvfs-metadata/.

Korean sorting problem

Set LC_COLLATE="ko_KR.UTF-8" in the locale settings.

Nautilus memory leak

On Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS, checking with htop or similar shows that the following program keeps consuming memory. 

/usr/bin/nautilus --gapplication-service
--gapplication-service
Runs as a GNOME application service, making Nautilus act as a file management service. Nautilus provides various functions such as file chooser dialogs, desktop icon management, and opening folders.

It can be stopped with nautilus -q.

See also

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