Ubuntu – Enhancing the Nautilus search option

14.04nautilussearch

In Nautilus if I press CTRL+F inside a folder I get a search box that helps me search in the current directory and sub directories for specific names and types of files, but what if I want to:

  • Find ALL files (including files without extensions)
  • Find a file without an extension (Without the dot symbol or without any other name/extension separator)
  • Find a file with/without a special character
  • Find all files that start/not start with a character
  • Find all files that end/not end with a character
  • Find all files that start/no start with a character but end/not end with a character
  • Find only files/folders
  • Find files with specific text in them
  • Find files with less/more/equal than/to X size
  • Find files modified/created in X date

I ask since the KDE's search has all of this ways of searching for especific types of files and is much better in thism giving a pretty good freedom for when I want to go searching for virtually anything.

Best Answer

Sounds like a job for gnome-search-tool.

gnome-search-tool example

It can perform partial matches on the file name and search on more options:

  • File content
  • Modification date
  • Size
  • File emptiness
  • Owner/Group
  • Name pattern exclusion
  • Name regular expression match
  • Hidden and backup files

It can also:

  • Follow symbolic links
  • Exclude other filesystems

You can define a a location to search. In my example I have two .gpl files in that directory but only one containing the word Server.

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