Nautilus invisible focused item when selecting files with Ctrl and arrow keys

[Bruno Santos]

After upgrading to 15.04 beta2 I noticed that selecting files with Ctrl and the arrow keys in Nautilus became more difficult since the active item had no decorations. I'm sure before there was some sort of dashed line around the active item's name, so this may be a regression.

I have searched for any other bug report on this, or any other person complaining about it, without success. I tried using the guest account to confirm it wasn't a previous configuration on my regular account, and the issue is also present. Maybe it is uncommon for people to select items in nautilus with the keyboard arrows?

I fixed it on my system for Ambiance by adding a dashed line decoration to

/usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-3.0/apps/nautilus.css

NautilusWindow * {
    -GtkPaned-handle-size: 1;
    outline-color: @selected_bg_color;
    outline-style: dashed;
    outline-width: 1px;
    outline-radius: 4px;
    outline-offset: -1px;
}

This may need to go in other selector properties, but it worked like this and I couldn't make it to work on any other selector.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Bruno Santos (bsantos)]

Still present in 16.04. Nautilus and Nemo don't show a selection cursor when using Ctrl+arrows to select items. :(

Ambiance and Radiance both share the problem, HighContrast, for example, works as expected.

[Christian (christianbueno-1)]

Hello.
*I want only use the keyboard.
*In nautilus.
*list view.
*ubuntu 16.04 LTS Xenial Xerus.
My problem is that i can't see the focus selected file or folder in nautilus. For example if I am in download folder i can select a file with ctrl+space then it file will have the selected item color (orange), then when i move down or up i can't see what files has the focus.

[Christian (christianbueno-1)]

By the way, as Bruno says this work well in High Contrast Theme.

[Christian (christianbueno-1)]

Thank you Bruno Santos for your solution

[Christian (christianbueno-1)]

I have to say that the problem persist on Ubuntu 16.10 Yakkety Yak.
By other hand, How we can only put a orange line below the file that has the focus?.
I say that because in Antergos with KDE plasma 5.8, " Dolphin" (File manager) has something similar and I like that.

[Lachezar Lechev (elpiel93)]

+1 Thank you for the solution
+1 for a bug fix!

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu 15.04 (vivid) reached end-of-life on February 4, 2016.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We appreciate that this bug may be old and you might not be interested in discussing it any more. But if you are then please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version and re-test.

[André Xuereb (andre.xuereb)]

I can confirm this bug in Ubuntu 17.04.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for ubuntu-themes (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[André Xuereb (andre.xuereb)]

The behaviour on 17.04 is still unchanged. Any clues for how to fix, or at least what to look for?