Traditional search-as-you-type on newer Nautilus versions

Ubuntu 17.10 and later

As the type-ahead search was a Ubuntu-specific patch, it got dropped together with Unity in 17.10. However there is a package called nautilus-typeahead in the Arch repository. Someone took it, compiled for Ubuntu and made a PPA. You can install it by these three commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lubomir-brindza/nautilus-typeahead
sudo apt dist-upgrade
nautilus -r

There is an issue on Launchpad about bringing this behavior back to official Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 14.04 to 17.04

Since the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS release type-ahead-find was the default behaviour in Nautilus again.

You can use a dconf key to switch between the different search modes:

• enable type-ahead-find:

  gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences enable-interactive-search true

• disable type-ahead-find in favor of recursive search:

  gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences enable-interactive-search false

Ubuntu 13.04 and 13.10

Nautilus 3.6.X cuts many features from the 3.4 and older versions. Canonical decided to keep using nautilus 3.4.2 in Ubuntu 12.10 because if this even though Nautilus 3.6 was already released. I don't think it is possible to get the old search behaviour in 3.6 but what I did was to install the SolusOS patched Nautilus (also works for Ubuntu 13.04) which includes all the features from 3.4.2 (it really is Nautilus 3.4.2) while maintaining the Nautilus 3.6 skin. I've tested this particular package and it works fine in Ubuntu 12.10 and 13.04.

Alternatively you could install the Nemo File Explorer which is a fork of Nautilus 3.4 that was made due to the Cinnamon dev team being disappointed with Nautilus 3.6, you can get the install instructions here.

Making it your default file browser is a bit more tricky, this blog post worked for me in Ubuntu 12.10 but some users reported the method not to work properly.

There are alternative methods however. See the following question:

• Make nemo the default file browser

Ubuntu 18.04 and newer

Well, this issue has motivated me enough to finally check out Ubuntu's PPA submission process; you can find Nautilus packages with the Arch community patch applied here: https://launchpad.net/~lubomir-brindza/+archive/ubuntu/nautilus-typeahead and install it by running:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lubomir-brindza/nautilus-typeahead
sudo apt upgrade
# or, if you don't want to upgrade any other packages:
sudo apt install nautilus

I'd just like to clarify the "Someone took it, compiled for Ubuntu and made a PPA" part in the top post - that's really not how PPA works. The actual way this works is that you provide a patch that adds/changes the desired functionality (typeahed in this case), and add it on top of all the other Ubuntu-specific patches you get when you download the source package using apt-get source nautilus. Once that's done and you've updated the changelog, debuild will create digitally signed files that describe what exactly changed with regards to the upstream source package. Only those are ever uploaded to Launchpad, which then attempts to compile and build the package. The changes to the upstream are reviewable in the Launchpad interface.

TL;DR: one does not upload the complete source code nor binaries directly to Launchpad nor PPA repository. Just wanted to clarify that, in case anyone was wary of something shady happening.

In Ubuntu Gnome 14.04, open dconf-editor. Go to
org>gnome>nautilus>preferences.

Check the box next to enable-interactive-search. Restart nautilus

Ubuntu 18.04+, Nautilus native solution

You can get a close behavior to search-as-you-type if you change the following options in the Nautilus Menu -> File -> Preferences -> Search & Preview:

• Change "Search in subfolders" to "Never"
• Uncheck the "Full Text Search": "Set as default" option

Now the visual interface will still be as the new Nautilus (tested with v3.26.4), while the functionality will be similar to the search-as-you-type as in the older Nautilus.

There is actually a way to get this in Nautilus 3.26 (the current version in Ubuntu 17.10). Which is building your own version from source, using a patch provided by the awesome arch-linux community. Luckily, the great build system in Ubuntu makes this quite easy. Here's the steps. I'll assume you'll be working in ~/bld-nautilus-typeahead. Start a console and do the following:

# install some necessary tools
sudo apt-get install git

# Create your work directory and go there
mkdir bld-nautilus-typeahead ; cd bld-nautilus-typeahead

# Clone the repository holding the needed patch: 
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/nautilus-typeahead.git

# Make sure the source repositories for the main archives are available:
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

# If the deb-src line for the main repository (usually around line 6) is commented out (starts with a #), un-comment it (remove the #) and save the file
sudo apt-get update

# Install the build dependencies
sudo apt-get build-dep nautilus

# Retrieve the sources for Nautilus
apt-get source nautilus

# Source should now be in the 'nautilus-3.26.0/' folder. Go there
cd nautilus-3.26.0/

# and Apply the patch from arch-linux
patch -p0 < ../nautilus-typeahead/nautilus-restore-typeahead.patch

# Build the package from source
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -b

# This will take a little time. If everything goes well, the related packages will end up in the parent directory. Go there
cd ..

# and install the required packages
sudo dpkg -i nautilus_3.26.0-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb nautilus-data_3.26.0-0ubuntu1_all.deb

Start a new Nautilus. Type some letters. Experience that feeling of joy that happens whem the file you intended gets selected.

Not quite what I wanted but the following limits the search to the current directory and is a very lightweight compromise:

# Get the previous setting in case I want to revert.
gsettings get org.gnome.nautilus.preferences recursive-search &&

# Only search the current directory. Do not go deeper.
gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences recursive-search 'never'

Tested on Ubuntu v18.10.

Ubuntu has updated the Nautilus repository, as a result the accepted answer no longer works. Use the command below to get the correct version of PPA Nautilus.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lubomir-brindza/nautilus-typeahead
sudo apt-get install nautilus=1:3.26.4-0~ubuntu18.04.4.ppa1 libnautilus-extension1a=1:3.26.4-0~ubuntu18.04.4.ppa1 nautilus-data=1:3.26.4-0~ubuntu18.04.4.ppa1
sudo apt-mark hold nautilus libnautilus-extension1a nautilus-data
nautilus -q

This works on Ubuntu 18.04, if you are using another version use the apt-cache policy nautilus to find the correct version of PPA.

The answer for Nautilus 3.25 and above is it's gone & not coming back unless someone totally rewrites the ubuntu patch & odds of that are extremely slim to none.

It is not something that can be configured in nautilus itself.