How to create a new folder on List view on nautilus?

Question

This is a really small problem, although it seems to be like a pretty big design issue.

When the folder is full of files, for example, there's no empty space left to right click on, so how do I create a new folder? Or a new document? There's absolutely no space to click.

Here's an example:

If I right click anywhere, it just opens the file right click menu.

Solution 1

Use the File->New Folder or the Ctrl+Shift+N shortcut.

Under the File menu you can find the New Document option as well.

Solution 2

Reference to the answer in https://askubuntu.com/a/550425/384849, here is another work around to trigger the right click menu in the list view.

You can press the Option key on the keyboard or Ctrl+F10 when no file is highlighted in the list view.

When there is a file highlighted, this is an easy way I found to deselect it. You can randomly input a few characters. Nautilus will enter the searching mode. Once there isn't a filename matching the characters you typed in, there will be no fill selected. Then press esc to exit, and you can press the Option key to trigger the menu right now.

Or, you can go one directory up then come down again to deselect the file.

Comments

[Charles Green]

Strange. I am using Nemo, which I find I prefer to Nautilus. And you're correct, when I try that in Nautilus it does not work correctly.

[hexagonest]

That's it! Nemo and Nautilus must work differently!

[Charles Green]

Only a little bit. I believe Nemo is based on Nautilus, and has some features that were deprecated in the current release. You can find some information on it at the wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemo_(file_manager)

[Dipanwita Kundu]

Definitely the answer... but a comment: It's a bit silly that you have to navigate up to the menu bar to add a folder, when the previous functionality worked fine - and it practically the same across all OS, right?

[yota]

and, on gnome shell, File is not accessible anymore... :(

[detly]

What "File menu"?

[Ahmad Shahwan]

As many realized, File menu is not there on Gnome, the default desktop manager for Ubuntu, at least of now. This unfortunately invalidates the answer. I think a window-manager-independent way of creating a new directory should be added to Nautilus.

[Robin Hsu]

Now in Ubuntu 18.04, the problem become severe: There is no "New folder" option in the file menu.

[Albtzrly]

I like the option key suggestion. My preferred way of deselecting the file is to ctrl+click the selected file instead of entering search mode.