Ctrl+N shortcut does not work when desktop has focus

[Julian Raschke]

When a Nautilus window is open, Ctrl+N opens a new window that shows the same folder as the focused Nautilus window.

However, when the desktop is focused, the shortcut doesn't work - instead I see an error that x-nautilus-desktop:// is not supported.

This functionality was previously reported as working in #307229.

This is on Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark (fully patched as of today) with GNOME Files 3.24.2.1.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug rpeort, I reported the issue upstream on https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=786908

[Tuomo Sipola (tuomosipola)]

Affects me, thanks for upstreaming it.

[scruss (scruss)]

NB: this will never be fixed, as gnome doesn't think users should have files on the desktop. Witness the sort desktop icons bugs filed in 2003 which sat unresolved for 15 years before being quietly expired upstream.

“People keep asking for it, but there's no demand.”

[Marc Nijdam (w.m0zart)]

Invoking nautilus with ctrl-n from the desktop is not a synonym for having files on the desktop. What sense does it make to bring that up here?

Also, why should Nautilus be causing this issue, especially if nautilus is not running. It more looks like gnome itself, which in its turn invokes nautilus with some strange arguments.

[Marc Nijdam (w.m0zart)]

One correction from the previous posting: it is not gnome but "nautilus-desktop" which handles the keyboard shortcut for ctrl-n. If nautilus-desktop is not running, then the shortcut will not have any effect.

[edgarswooth (tsbertalan)]

Status is "expired", but this is still here in late 2019 on Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS. A behavioral work-around for me is to use Super+# to open the (pinned) Nautilus from the dock ... then use Ctrl+l to get to wherever I *really* want to go.

But it's definitely a bug: as Marc Nijdam said, it's obviously due to some invalid `x-nautilus-desktop:///` argument which is passed to the Nautilus invocation. I don't know where in the labyrinth of Ubuntu/Nautilus/Debian/Gnome repositories this argument arises, but it would seem that a simple fix, valid for most users, would be simply to hard-code `$USER/Desktop\` instead. This would at least be better than the current state of affairs, which works for no one.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Nautilus stopped handling the Desktop in newer series, marking as wontfix. It doesn't seem important enough to get prioritized for a Bionic stable update either at this point