Nautilus 43 beta has arrived in the latest daily builds of Ubuntu 22.10 “Kinetic Kudu”.
“And?”, you quizzically quip.
Well, it’s not that big of a deal. However, I was eager to see ‘what the plan was’ for GTK4/libadwaita apps within the context of Ubuntu’s Yaru theme. Ubuntu 22.04, for those who’ve forgotten, intentionally held back on shipping a number of GTK4/libadwaita ports that were part of GNOME 42 — Nautilus among them.
Well, I’m pleased to see (and say) that the new-look GTK4/libadwaita version of the Nautilus file manager sits proud within Ubuntu’s Yaru-themed desktop. Any custom Yaru accent colour choice is applied to libadwaita apps too — there had been some worry in the community that libadwaita apps wouldn’t be theme-able in this regard.
This incarnation of the famous file manager also looks a lot more modern than the one it replaces.
There is a minor bit of friction I noticed right off-the-bat: I’m used to being able to right-click on a folder and select the “open in new tab” option just by moving my cursor. This option is still present but, in line with the way libadwaita context menus behave, it now takes an extra click to get at as it’s nested within an “open” sub-menu.
I posted an overview of what’s new in Nautilus 43 last week. All of those key changes I spotlighted in that post are present in 22.10, including Files’ addictive new adaptive UI, slew of sorting options in ‘Recents’, and integration with the GNOME Disks utility for quickly formatting external media.
While the bulk of the GNOME 43 beta isn’t currently available in 22.10, it can’t be too far behind. As well as boasting the Nautilus 43 beta there’s also the latest beta builds of the disk utility, the GNOME calculator, and the GNOME Settings daemon.
So if you’ve been wanting to go hands-on with the new features in Nautilus nice and early, now’s your chance!