Extending Nautilus with Scripts

If you've used the GNOME desktop environment, you're probably more than just slightly familiar with the Nautilus file manager. But Nautilus is a lot more than that. At least it can be. Using scripts, you can expand the capabilities of Nautilus to do ... well, any number of things.

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If you're familiar with scripting, skip this paragraph. If you're not, then all you need to know is that a script is simply a text file (written in what's called a scripting language) that you can run at the command line to perform a specific task.

A Nautilus script can be written in any scripting language. It simply carries out an action on one or more files and folders. You run the scripts from within Nautilus; there's no need to drop to the command line.

One of the great things about Linux, and free and Open Source software in general, is the user community. Members of the community go out of their way to create some interesting software and scripts for a variety of Linux applications. And Nautilus scripts are no exception. There are literally hundreds available that enable you to:

• Move files or transfer then via FTP or email
• Convert audio and video files to different formats
• Mount ISO files and Windows shares
• Rename multiple files
• Install fonts

And more.

You can download scripts from a number of sites, including G-Script, this site, and GNOME-Look.

Once you've downloaded one or more scripts, they're easy to install. If the script came in an archive (a file with the extension .zip, .gz, or .bz2), double click on the archive to open it in the GNOME archive manager. Extract the contents to the folder .gnome2/nautilus-scripts in your /home directory.

If, on the other hand, you downloaded a script file just copy it to the scripts directory. Remember that the directory is hidden. To view it within Nautilus, select View > Show Hidden Files.