File Manager

GNOME ships with Nautilus, an intuitive and powerful file manager. Using the advanced GVFS technology, Nautilus is able to display remote folders just like folders on the local file system, giving users access to all their files everywhere with a single consistent interface.

Nautilus provides a plugin interface, enabling developers to extend its functionality to provide more information about users' files. This provides a richer and more coherant experience for users, removing the need for seperate applications to manage various types of files.

Nautilus plugins can extend the file manager's functionality in a number of ways. Plugins can add extra information to file properties dialogs, providing users with everything they need to know about files. For example, GNOME ships with a plugin to display extra information about audio and video files, such as the codec used, the dimensions of the video, and artist and album of music files extracted from a CD.

Plugins can also add columns to the list view and automatically place emblems on files. This can be used to provide pertinent information to the user at a glance. For example, a Nautilus plugin could provide version control information on folders checked out from a version control system. Users could see directly in the file manager if a file is up to date, or if changes have been made locally.

Nautilus also allows developers to add items to the context menu for files and folders. Context menu items can specify for which types of files they should be displayed, so the context menu only provides actions that are relevant for the selected files. For example, File Roller, GNOME's archive file utility, adds an item to the context menu to extract archive files directly. Extra context menu items provide easy access to common operations on different types of files.

In addition to a flexible plugin architecture, Nautilus can also display a thumbnail for any type of file for which a thumbnailer has been provided. Thumbnails show a preview of the file, helping users find the files they want. GNOME can automatically create thumbnails for most image and movie files, and allows applications to install additional thumbnailer programs to create thumbnails for application-specific files. Thumbnail management is fully specified by freedesktop.org, so any thumbnailers you provide can be used by all applications.