After minimizing a Nautilus window of another partition or external media or Trash folder, clicking on the "Files" icon on the Launcher again doesn't restore the minimized window, but opens a new one

[snapy]

This was copied from the original bug report that has been closed. Note that the work-around there doesn't work anymore. I'm using Ubuntu 16.04 / 64bit.

HOW TO REPRODUCE

1. Connect a removable media to the computer.
2. On the launcher, click on the "Files" icon.
3. On the left sidebar, click on the removable media icon or the trash.
4. Minimize the window.
5. Click on the "Files" icon.

EXPECTED BEHAVIOUR

- The Files window to be maximized.

REAL BEHAVIOUR

- A new window is opened.

RELEVANT DETAILS

- One way to navigate between windows at this moment is to use the "control + tabulation" key combination, or to click again on the "Files" icon so windows are exposed.

Otherwise the minimized window Can be restored by clicking on the Volume's launcher icon or scrolling on the Files icon

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Rodrigo Lledó (rodhos-hp)]

Is not a bug, this is the right behaviour. You can maximize the window by clicking in the external drive icon at the bottom or the trash icon. Is a bad design.

[snapy (sdfjsfjaei-hans)]

Let's assume it is just bad design, where should one report it, if not here?

Anyway, according to Wikipedia

> A software bug is an error, flaw, failure or fault in a computer program or system that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result, or to behave in unintended ways.

How do we know this is intended behaviour? It doesn't seem like it is, because in the previous bug report, a fix was released.

[Davi Medrade (davimedrade)]

It is even less intuitive when it's a secondary partition that is a permanent part of the main filesystem tree. For example, I keep my work files on a separate partition, but it's always mounted in /home/david/data. So, if I open Nautilus it'll show my home directory. Then, as soon as I double-click the “data” mountpoint, the Nautilus window “moves” from the Nautilus icon to the Data drive icon.

I'm fine using the drive icon to mount it, but once it's open I always try to find the window in the Nautilus icon. I can't seem to get used to this idea that local files are on Nautilus but external files are not (even though they are open in the Nautilus application).

I've been using Ubuntu as my main OS for years, and this behavior still trips me up. I think it's safe to assume that if I haven't gotten used to this behavior by now, it's not gonna happen. If this is the way it's supposed to be and novice users don't get confused by it, can we at least have an option in Settings to group all Nautilus windows under the Nautilus icon?

[snapy (sdfjsfjaei-hans)]

Here's workaround (thanks Sadi Yumuşak (sa-yu)) that works for me in 16.04:

1. cp "/usr/share/applications/org.gnome.Nautilus.desktop" ~/.local/share/applications/files.desktop
2. Create ~/.config/autostart/fsck-nautilus.desktop containing (or create it via Ubuntu's autostart configurator):

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=sh -c "~/fsck-nautilus.sh"
Hidden=false
NoDisplay=false
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
Name[en_US]=Nautilus fix
Name=Nautilus fix
Comment[en_US]=
Comment=

3. chmod +x ~/.config/autostart/fsck-nautilus.desktop
4. Check in Ubuntu autostart that it's enabled.
5. Create "~/fsck-nautilus.sh" containing:

sleep 10
nautilus -q
sleep 5
nautilus -q

gtk-launch files.desktop

[Mikhail (mikhaildd)]

It is simply an awful design decision and I am so pissed off to see that there has been no activity on this bug although at all it has been discussed by so many people on different forums lately. I really hope this will be fixed in 17.04, otherwise I will have to consider switching from Ubuntu like many people already did because this is so annoying

[Kai-Heng Feng (kaihengfeng)]

I can't reproduce this issue on my Zesty machine.