Ubuntu – Cannot rename files or folders in Nautilus

16.04nautilus

As of today I'm facing this behavior in Ubuntu 16.04 Nautilus:

I create a new file/folder by right clicking in Nautilus "New Folder".
When I focus the folder name to edit it, the focus gets lost and I can't edit the name.

Nautilus looks like this while typing the name of the folder:
enter image description here

In addition, when I try to hit Del while trying to edit the name, the file/folder gets deleted. If I hit Backspace, Nautilus navigates back to the parent folder.

I validated no key is stuck and rebooted Ubuntu. Nothing did fix it.

Update: When switching Nautilus to grid view, everything works fine.
Update 2:
I also tried

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop
sudo apt-get install unity

Update 3:
I disabled Auto-Raise using ccsm:
enter image description here

I also disabled Raise-Windows keyboard and mouse bindings:
enter image description here

Update 4:

Output of dpkg -l nautilus*:

Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                                                                                   Version                                          Architecture                                     Description
+++-======================================================================================-================================================-================================================-=================================================================================================================================================================================
ii  nautilus                                                                               1:3.18.4.is.3.14.3-0ubuntu5                      amd64                                            file manager and graphical shell for GNOME
ii  nautilus-data                                                                          1:3.18.4.is.3.14.3-0ubuntu5                      all                                              data files for nautilus
un  nautilus-dropbox                                                                       <none>                                           <none>                                           (no description available)
un  nautilus-open-terminal                                                                 <none>                                           <none>                                           (no description available)
ii  nautilus-sendto                                                                        3.8.2-1ubuntu1                                   amd64                                            integrates Evolution and Pidgin into the Nautilus file manager
un  nautilus-sendto-empathy                                                                <none>                                           <none>                                           (no description available)
ii  nautilus-share                                                                         0.7.3-2ubuntu1                                   amd64                                            Nautilus extension to share folder using Samba

Best Answer

It seems like this may be a bug in Nautilus, you may need to use the terminal to rename files for the time being until this bug gets fixed. This also could be a file permission issue.

Open up a terminal window and type in the following command to view the folder permissions:

cd temp && ll

Once you have done this, type in the following command (keep in mind you will need super user privileges for this, and NewFolderName would be the new name of the folder):

sudo mv "./Untitled Folder" "./NewFolderName"

Of course, if you do not feel comfortable with using the command line every time you want to rename files or folders, perhaps you could try a different file manager like Thunar.

To install Thunar, open up a terminal window and type in the following command:

sudo apt install thunar

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