14 DAY TRIAL // The development team behind Nautilus (Files) file manager for the GNOME desktop environment are working hard these days to implement all the cool new features and improvements before the final 3.20 build sees the light of day.
And so they managed to push the second Beta release of Nautilus 3.20 to public testers a few hours ago, despite the fact that the upcoming GNOME 3.20 desktop environment reached Beta 2 status last week, and it is now preparing for its "Release Candidate" stage of development.
As usual, we have acquired the internal changelog to share with our readers what's new in Nautilus 3.20 Beta 2, and it looks like there are some big improvements, such as the ability to copy file from the Trash, implementation of "Open With Other Application" context menu for all items, and compatibility with the latest GTK+ styles.
Folders will now be revealed in their creation, "Untitled" is removed during creation of templates, the shell search provider should work as expected, and app notifications are being removed when the respective application is closed so that they no longer appear after reboot.
When navigating loopback mounted devices and DVD-Video discs, Nautilus will now properly display the info bar, thumbnails are no longer displayed at small zoom levels, and the undo delete notification can be hidden. Also, Nautilus now automatically selects the first file during searches even if the search operation is not complete.
The dark theme background should now be fixed
Continuing with changes, the dark theme background and wording of the conflict dialog have been improved, there are a bunch of localization fixes, and the Alt+Return keyboard shortcut can be used to reveal the Properties dialog. Additionally, it now possible to hide files when they are being renamed from normal ones.
While the GNOME developers have already started work on the RC (Release Candidate) build of the GNOME 3.20 desktop environment and core components/apps, it looks like Nautilus devs are a little behind the schedule, but the changes implemented in the second Beta build are great.
You can now take Nautilus 3.20 Beta 2 for a test drive if your GNU/Linux distribution has the latest GNOME 3.19.91 packages, but the Release Candidate build should also be available for public testing early next week. The GNOME 3.20 desktop environment is currently scheduled for release on March 23, 2016.