File manager behavior preferences

You can control whether you single-click or double-click files, how executable text files are handled, and the trash behavior. Click the menu button in the sidebar of the window, select Preferences, then go to the General section.

General

Action to Open Items

By default, clicking selects files and double-clicking opens them. You can instead choose to have files and folders open when you click on them once. When you use single-click mode, you can hold down the Ctrl key while clicking to select one or more files.

Executable text files

An executable text file is a file that contains a program that you can run (execute). The file permissions must also allow for the file to run as a program. The most common are Shell, Python and Perl scripts. These have extensions .sh, .py and .pl, respectively.

Executable text files are also called scripts. All scripts in the ~/.local/share/nautilus/scripts folder will appear in the context menu for a file under the Scripts submenu. When a script is executed from a local folder, all selected files will be pasted to the script as parameters. To execute a script on a file:

  1. Navigate to the desired folder.

  2. Select the desired file.

  3. Right click on the file to open the context menu and select the desired script to execute from the Scripts menu.

A script will not be passed any parameters when executed from a remote folder such as a folder showing web or ftp content.