A few months ago, I wrote a guide detailing how to set custom folder icons in Nautilus without the need for installing third-party apps or altering the icon set.
This is accomplished using a feature inherent to the Nautilus file manager. This feature isn’t even a novelty as the file manager has been allowing users to modify folder icons since ages ago.
However, currently this is a lesser-known, underrepresented capability.
Unless you have knowledge to launch a folder’s “Properties” dialog and click on the directory icon at the top (which triggers a file picker from where you can choose any valid image file), you probably would never stumble upon this feature.
I certainly hadn’t until last year!
Why are custom folder icons useful?
Well, they can aid your workflow by letting you give important folders a distinctive, identifiable, or specific look. And they can scratch a personal aesthetic itch, as was my case when I used the feature to change the blank ‘snap’ folder in Ubuntu’s Home directory to one with an emblematic icon.
So I’m pleased to see GNOME’s making this niche-yet-nifty feature easier for users to discover.
Improvements Filed
Over the Christmas period GNOME contributor Khalid Abu Shawarib made a clutch of code commits that significantly improve the discoverability of this feature, most notably:
- Add an ‘edit’ icon to the Properties dialog folder thumbnail
- Add button to ‘reset’ custom icon to default icon
Interestingly, TWIG reports that these improvements happened as a “side effect of porting a few dialogs away from deprecated GTK dialog APIs”. But whether these changes were as-planned or pre happenstance, they’re welcome by me all the same!
Nautilus 46 (due in March, and almost certain to ship in April’s Ubuntu 24.04 LTS release) could include this small buff — though no guarantees. They’re already present in the latest GNOME nightly builds of Nautilus (46 alpha) should you wish to check them out.