Ubuntu – Ubuntu 18.04 Nautilus copy image instead of path

With a little reaserch, I found out what you may be looking for. This can be done using .desktop files. Let me demonstrate.

Create a file in your home diretory(as an example) with the extension .desktop with the following content:

#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Terminal=true
Exec=bash <path-to-your-script> %u
Name=visible name here
Comment=comment here
Icon=icon path here

Replace <path-to-your-script> with path of the script you want to execute. Here %u is the path of the file which you will be dragging on the .desktop file to trigger the script. This will obviously be passed as an argument to your script.

Don't forget to make your .desktop executable as well by:

chmod u+x test.desktop

To check if it is working you can point it to this script:

#!/bin/sh

echo $1 > ~/out.txt

You will see the full path of the file which you dragged onto your .desktop file stored in out.txt in you home directory.

Finally, you can set up a dock to have just this in it, so you have it at the side of the screen.

References:

Desktop Entry Specification

Gnome Developer - Desktop Files

Copy from nautilus and then paste into a terminal by right-mouse "Paste as Filenames". This will preserve the path. This menu option appears only after copy. I have tested this on fresh installs of 19.10 and 20.04.