Can not type file path in file open dialog, also can not turn on always-use-location-entry

[Qianqian Fang]

after upgrading to 16.04 from 14.04, I found that all file open dialog lost the address bar (location entry). The only thing to navigate between folders is the breadcrumb bar. Every path change requires a dozen of clicking, while before I could just paste the path and done. This is a big inconvenience.

after googling, I found tons of reports to restore the location entry using the below command

gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences always-use-location-entry true
 or
dconf write /org/gnome/nautilus/preferences/always-use-location-entry true

however, this fails to work on my system, I got

fangq@taote:~$ gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences always-use-location-entry true

(process:11686): dconf-WARNING **: failed to commit changes to dconf: GDBus.Error:org.gtk.GDBus.UnmappedGError.Quark._g_2dfile_2derror_2dquark.Code4: Failed to rename file '/home/users/fangq/.config/dconf/user.SO58SZ' to '/home/users/fangq/.config/dconf/user': g_rename() failed: No such file or directory

I would like to get a workaround to revert to the previous setting (either location entry is displayed by default, or can be re-enabled by clicking a button on the dialog). Also, I would suggest the developers to consider adding this feature back. For people who use Linux a lot, clicking is just not fast enough!

Links to similar complains:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/154106/show-address-bar-w-full-path-in-nautilus-instead-of-breadcrumbs-bar
https://www.howtogeek.com/189777/how-to-show-the-location-entry-instead-of-the-breadcrumb-bar-in-nautilus-in-ubuntu-14.04/
https://askubuntu.com/questions/547688/default-to-showing-and-using-pathbar-in-ubuntu-file-dialogs
https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/65
https://blog.tersmitten.nl/restore-the-location-bar-in-nautilus.html
https://askubuntu.com/questions/324064/use-path-bar-and-address-bar-in-nautilus

and many more

https://www.google.com/search?q=nautilus+always_use_location_entry

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The screenshot is a gtk one, the issue sounds like an upstream one though