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Jan Groth
Asked: 2012-01-16 03:48:19 +0800 CST

On-the-fly file search in gnome 3?

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I recently switched to Gnome 3 (on Onereic 11.10). I was a big fan of gnome-do (on Gnome 2), where I heavily used the "files and folders"-plugin. This allows to configure a list of files and folder to be searched on-the-fly while typing. E.g. starting to type "timesheet" opens "timesheet_2011.ods" from my dropbox account...

I can't find anything like this in Gnome 3. I know that there is a list of "recent items", and also the name of bookmarked folders in nautilus is searched, but that's not (exactly) what I'm looking for...

So, what I want is this:

  • tell Gnome 3 where my files are (certainly not only in my home folder)
  • have them searched on the fly while I'm typing

I think Unity offers something like this - but hey, I'm using Gnome 3 ;-)

Anything I missed?

11.10

4 Answers

  1. Actually, there is something like this with zeitgeist, but the project is far from ready and, as you pointed out, it only searches your history. It might be interesting to make an extension for the gnome shell that uses '/usr/bin/locate' in combination with a list of extensions a user might search for. I'm not really sure how the API works...

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  2. To answer my own question after some deeper research:

    No, there is nothing I missed. You cannot configure gnome 3 to search files and folders. "Recently used items" is a help, also "Bookmarked folders". But nothing like gnome-do exists. Yet. Hopefully.

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  3. Debian package zeitgeist-extension-fts description:

    full text search extension for the Zeitgeist engine

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  4. There is a gnome extension, it looks like it works:

    https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/284/tracker-search/

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