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Is there a keyboard shortcut to open the Ubuntu file manager?

If there isn't one by default, how can I set such a shortcut?

RookieGui
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TellMeWhy
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3 Answers3

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It is under System Settings -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> Launchers, and by default on my system it is set to Explorer key (whatever that means), but personally i've set it to Super + E , since this is the same as Window's shortcut, which is what I used to use a lot year and half ago when I still was a Windows user. Just click on the area where the description for key is, it will say new accelerator and press keys you want to set

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And if you want to create a shortcut to open some directory other than home, go to Custom shortcuts, and set a new shortcut for nautilus /path/to/dir command. For instance, nautilus /usr/share/applications

Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy
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    The "explorer" media key is an additional key on multi-media keyboards usually depicted by an icon of a little house and therefore aka the "home" key! ;-) :D :D :D – Fabby Nov 07 '15 at 20:22
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    The explorer opened is not as root. Is there any way to make shortcut of opening the explorer as root? – sirajalam049 Mar 01 '17 at 13:35
  • I clicked the + sign to add the custom shortcut, and named it as Explorer and command as sudo nautilus, and gave it the shortcut super+E, but it isn't working. – sirajalam049 Mar 01 '17 at 13:39
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    @Siraj sudo is command-line only command. You need to use gksu instead or pkexec instead. That will show you a GUI popup for password when you need to run filemanager with admin privilleges. Note that this approach is not recommended. Nautilus has extension nautilus-admin so I would recommend you use that instead – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy Mar 01 '17 at 18:35
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Naming it as Explorer/explorer didn't work for me.

On Xubuntu (which used the thunar file manager):

Under Settings -> Keyboard -> Application Shortcuts Click Add -> set Command: thunar -> set shortcut to whatever you'd like (coming from Windows, I used Super+E)

Alternatively you can check which command opens the file manager in Terminal, and put it as the Command value while making/editing a keybinding from the Settings.

Kevin Bowen
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The_L0s3r.
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Unfortunately, there is not shortcut, you can however create a custom one using the following procedure:

open settings, then navigate to devices then keyboard, here, you will see a lot of shortcuts,now scroll to the bottom until you find the '+' sign, click it,under name, type the name of your shortcut e.g 'Open navigator', under command, type 'nautilus' and then click set shortcut, a pop up appears, now set the combination that you deem fit e.g Super + E and add it and you will be good to go. I am using Ubuntu 18.04 but I hope that this solution will work for most versions of Ubuntu/Linux

Dennis Otwoma
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