Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is getting a fix for Nautilus that restores ‘Delete’ as the focused button in the trash confirmation dialog, undoing an accidental swap that made ‘Cancel’ the focused button instead.
That ‘unintentional’ focus flip meant you could no longer hit enter to action file deletion for Trash since it instead cancelled it. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve assumed I emptied the trash since upgrading to Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, only to find I hadn’t.
My muscle memory has struggled to adapt to needing to explicitly click (or tab to) the delete button.
Annoying, but thankfully not intentional.
GNOME developers confirmed the button focus was flipped by mistake. A fix has now landed upstream in Files (aka Nautilus) that once again makes Delete the default highlighted action in the trash emptying dialog.
Better yet, Ubuntu has packaged the fix for 26.04 LTS, currently residing in the proposed branch for testing. It should be in place ahead of August’s 26.04.1 LTS point release, which is when upgrades from Ubuntu 24.04 LTS officially open.
A tiny bug fix in the grand scheme, and one mouse users won’t have noticed (clicking Delete doesn’t require anything to be focused). But for habitual enter-pressers like myself, this change was jarring to years of learned behaviour.
Consistency is key – pun intended – and with this fix in place, I won’t be accidentally leaving my trash lying around.