This post won’t change your life but it might make moving files and folders a little quicker — though, no promises!
On Fedora I can drag a file over a folder in Nautilus and, if I don’t let go, the folder I’m hovering over opens right there, where I am, not in an extra window or a new tab. macOS also has a similar feature in its file manager Finder called “spring loaded folders” (and gives users options to control the hover duration to trigger it).
Written out in words this feature sounds cumbersome, so here’s a GIF to demonstrate it:
I’m messy.
My ~/Downloads folder is a bomb site.
I regularly and routinely have to “tidy up”, which means moving files into different folders under the pretence of order — hence this feature comes in handy. Using it I move files/folders into another folder or (more importantly for me, inside of a subfolder inside of that folder) with ease, without ever taking my finger off my mouse button.
Is this a preference everyone will want to turn on? No, but if you use Ubuntu and it does sound like something you’d use, it’s dead easy to enable.
Pop open a new Terminal windows and run:
gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences open-folder-on-dnd-hover true
The change takes effect instantly.
Open Nautilus and drag a file over a target folder and, et voila, it springs open instantly. You can let go of the file to drop it there or keep holding the file and mouse over a subfolder to open that one, and so on, like so:
You can enable the “open folder on drag and drop hover” using the dconf-editor utility (i.e. a GUI way) but the command line is safe. The dconf-editor is a great utility but it’s very easy to get lost trying to find a value or, speaking from experience, accidentally adjust a setting while mousing around.
And if you try it but find it annoying, you can turn it off just as easily too:
gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences open-folder-on-dnd-hover false
Anyway, that’s it; a simple setting I find very useful — and now you know how to enable it too.
