"Create new document" - right-click option missing in Ubuntu GNOME

Question

I would like to to have a "create new document" option in the right-click menu.

Currently it looks like this :

I am using Ubuntu GNOME 16.04 LTS with GNOME 3.20.

Solution 1

This functionality has been removed from Nautilus 3.20 (either by error or on purpose). There is a bug report on it here. If it turns out to be a bug it will be fixed upstream and then will either be back in 3.22 or backported into 3.20, or if this has been done on purpose then as you can see from the LP bug report they are wanting to make it a distro specific patch.

Solution 2

1. See if you have ~/Templates folder². Create one if it is missing using command:

   mkdir ~/Templates
   

2. Now create an empty file from command prompt:¹

   touch ~/Templates/Text\ File.txt
   

The "Create Document" option is back again and you can create a new text file or a new document.

¹ The backslash is used to tell the shell that the space following it is part of the filename. Since the shell recognizes spaces as delimiters between commands/options/arguments, unless you "quote it", 'quote it', or quote\ it, the shell will treat whatever comes after the space as a separate argument.

² The ~/Templates folder is localized, change his name accordingly to your localization (ex: ~/Modèles for French localization).

Solution 3

You can go into your ~/Templates folder and create templates yourself, then they will appear in the right-click menu. For example:

cd Templates

touch Filename.txt

Solution 4

It seems like when the templates folder is empty this option is disabled. The simplest fix for this problem is to create a file in the templates folder:

touch `xdg-user-dir TEMPLATES`/Empty\ Text\ File.txt

It's definitely a bug as stated.

Solution 5

In the case you are using an ubuntu with a different language that english, first check where your Templates folder is.

vi ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs

And in this file, check for XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR=. In spanish for example you will have something like:

XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Escritorio"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Descargas"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/Plantillas"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/Público"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Documentos"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/Música"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Imágenes"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Vídeos"

Then you can apply the solution listed in the other answers:

mkdir ~/Plantillas  (or the name listed before)
touch ~/Plantillas/Documento\ de\ Texto.txt

And that is all.

View more solutions

Comments

[gsxruk]

Marked as a possible duplicate of this answered question

[pavel_orekhov]

Maybe Gnome is trying to be like Mac OS? Because Mac OS also just has "Create folder" and not "Create file/document". Here's Mac OS: imgur.com/a/Hc9aQbX

[Pe Dro]

The simplest solution is to use the single command: $ touch ~/Templates/"New Document" and this brings back the feature of add a New Document named empty file to the directory.

[Shihab Shahriar Khan]

ubuntu 20.04 user here, any way to enable this option in desktop? the solutions here only work for file manager

[bobo]

what is the purpose of the \ after Text?

[HMagdy]

\ this is because of file name contains space you can use ""

[Luka]

I had no problems with 16.04, recently I upgraded to 17.04 and option is GONE. help.

[Matteo]

This should be the correct answer

[Roey]

Is there a way to edit the file's name upon creation ? currently it creates a text file with a default name "Text File.txt"

[HMagdy]

@Roey yes it's peace of cake. Just rename ~/Templates/whateveryouwant.txt or after creation, you can rename the created file.

[Roey]

@HassanMagdySaad Upon creation for every file without needing to manually rename it afterwards. This is how it works on MS Windows for any new file or folder with the right-click-menu. Thanks

[Dan M.]

@Roey you can press F2 immediately, but yeah, there must be some knob to turn to turn it into "rename mode after creation" by default. At least it works that way on CentOS 7, so it should be doable on ubuntu.

[Axel Werner]

I have the ~/Templates folder and created a newFile.txt there via CLI. still no new file entry in context menu. still does not work for me somehow on ubuntu 18.10

[Axel Werner]

nice hint about that "xdg-user-dir" tool. it showed me, that my TEMPLATE Variable/Folder/Setting was set to my $HOME only somehow. NOT to my Template folder. However even if i reset this setting to $HOME/Templates it didnt worked for me so far on Ubuntu 18.10 .

[Axel Werner]

As the remarks in this configuration file states, these entries are set/updated by the ''xdg-user-dirs-update'' cli tool. So i did a ''xdg-user-dirs-update --set TEMPLATES ~/Templates'' to reset my Templates setting to the $HOME/Templates folder within my homedirectory. However... it still does not work for me somehow on ubuntu 18.10 . still no "new document" on my context menu.

[Naveen]

Please change the permission for this folder and file

[arsho]

touch ~/Templates/New\ File if you do not want any extension.

[Garrett]

It also wasn't working for me after deleting (and recreating) the Templates folder. A simpler solution than installing Ubuntu-Tweak that worked for me was this one.

[Namphibian]

It is now 2020 and Ubuntu 18.04 still has this. This still works just cant believe they are not fixing this in the release.

[Shihab Shahriar Khan]

does this work in desktop? ubuntu 20.04

[Vadim Kotov]

@ShihabShahriarKhan It works, but not on the Desktop. See this answer for more info.

[Hans Deragon]

The reported bug report above has been marked as duplicate of Launchpad #1632027. Please vote on #1632027.

[Nav]

Wow! This is impressive. Could anyone provide a link to explain how this works? Does the OS look at the Templates folder and search for File.txt somewhere?

[HMagdy]

@Nav youtube.com/watch?v=967yhGf1JbQ and help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/files-templates.html.en give you good details about that

[user643722]

Same for me. I wonder if GNOME needs to be informed of the update.