File manager behavior preferences

You can control whether you single-click or double-click files, how executable text files are handled, and the trash behavior. Click the menu button in the top-right corner of the window, select Preferences, then go to the General section.

Behavior <gui>Action to Open Items</gui>

By default, clicking selects files and double-clicking opens them. You can instead choose to have files and folders open when you click on them once. When you use single-click mode, you can hold down the Ctrl key while clicking to select one or more files.

Executable text files

An executable text file is a file that contains a program that you can run (execute). The file permissions must also allow for the file to run as a program. The most common are Shell, Python and Perl scripts. These have extensions .sh, .py and .pl, respectively.

amigadave

This "section" should be split out to a separate page. It is not related to the preferences nor behaviour settings of Nautilus, although it could be a a seealso link from this page.

Executable text files are also called scripts. All scripts in the ~/.local/share/nautilus/scripts folder will appear in the context menu for a file under the Scripts submenu. When a script is executed from a local folder, all selected files will be pasted to the script as parameters. To execute a script on a file:

Navigate to the desired folder.

Select the desired file.

Right click on the file to open the context menu and select the desired script to execute from the Scripts menu.

A script will not be passed any parameters when executed from a remote folder such as a folder showing web or ftp content.