After I upgraded to Ubuntu Gnome 16.10, typing in Nautilus no longer searches through the folder structure recursively, but rather just skips to a file in the folder (the old "type-ahead" mechanism).
Why is this? Is the Ubuntu version of Nautilus patched to do this? How can I enable the standard Nautilus search behavior?
NOTE: This question is the opposite of Traditional search-as-you-type on newer Nautilus versions -- I'm trying to enable global search, disable local search.
I feel the same way about recursive search so here is a fix for newer versions of Ubuntu:
Nautilus should immediately show a change in behavior.
Please let me know if this doesn't work for you, thanks!
Open a Nautilus window, then go to Preferences. Go to Search & Preview tab and make sure "search in subfolders" is set to local computer, or all locations, as you need.