Monday, September 27, 2010

Tweak Nautilus to Display the Size of a File Under its Filename


1:03 AM |

Do you prefer to view your files in the Icon View in Nautilus (the File Browser) rather than the List View, but you want to see the size of each file? There is a way to display the size of a file under its filename in Nautilus. We will show you two methods you can use to accomplish this.
Method 1 – Using the Preferences in Nautilus

To view the size of a file below its icon in the Icon View in Nautilus, you can change a setting directly within Nautilus. To do this, open Nautilus by selecting a folder on the Places menu.
 Select Preferences from the Edit menu.
Click the Display tab on the File Management
Preferences dialog box. There are three drop-down lists in the Icon Captions section of the Display tab.

Switch the values of the first two so the first drop-down list has Size selected and the second drop-down list has None selected.
NOTE: You do not have to have the second caption set to None. You can select an item to display below the size on the icon, if desired. You can also change the third caption. The second and third values display below the file’s icon when you zoom in on the file. Zooming in on a file is discussed in a note later in this post.
 To close the File Management Preferences dialog box, click Close.
 If you are currently in List View, you will not see the file size below the filename. It displays in the Size column.
To view the files as icons, select Icon View from the drop down list in the upper, right corner of the File Browser window.
 You will now see the size of the file below the filename on the icon.
 NOTE: You can view more information by zooming in on the file in Icon View in Nautilus. Use the Ctrl + + key (that’s the Control key and the plus key) to zoom in closer on the files and Ctrl + - (Control key and the minus key) to zoom out again. As you zoom closer more information displays below the icon for the file.

Method 2 – Using the Configuration Editor


The second method involves using the Configuration Editor. To open the Configuration Editor, press Alt + F2 to open the Run Application
dialog box. Enter “gconf-editor” (without the quotes) in the edit box and click Run.
 In the Configuration Editor, navigate to apps | nautilus | icon_view and double-click captions in the list of keys on the right.
 The Edit Key dialog box displays. Select size in the list of Values and click the Up button to move it to the first position.
 Click OK to close the Edit Key dialog box.
 To close the Configuration Editor, select Quit from the File menu.
 The size now displays below the filename for the file in Icon View, as pictured earlier under the first method.

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