Nautilus doesn't allow adding/removing bookmarks

Question

I just did a fresh install of Ubuntu 13.10 (actually, I've done two fresh installs, hoping that trying again would get this working).

I don't seem to have the ability to add or remove bookmarks from Nautilus. The ones that are there by default (Home, Desktop, Documents, etc.) work fine. I can right click on them and rename them. However, I cannot remove any of them. The option is there "Remove" but disabled/grayed out.

The same is true if I try to add bookmarks. I go to "Files -> Bookmarks", and all the bookmarks show up, but the buttons at the bottom to add, remove, or re-order the bookmarks are simply disabled.

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Custom bookmarks

To add and remove custom bookmarks, refer to the documentation in Files ▸ Help ▸ Edit folder bookmarks:

Add a bookmark:

1. Open the folder (or location) that you want to bookmark.

2. Click the gear button in the toolbar and pick Bookmark this Location.

Delete a bookmark:

1. Click on Files in the top bar and pick Bookmarks from the app menu.

2. In the Bookmarks window, select the bookmark you wish to delete and click the - button.

The "gear button" is on the right side of Nautilus:

It will be grayed out if the location you've opened is already bookmarked.

Places

The bookmarks seen under the "Places" heading are an exception:

They're not just bookmarks, but XDG user directories with a separate configuration backend, so the Nautilus developers deliberately chose to disable removing them.

The issue of working around this limitation is being discussed in this question.

Answer 2

I think I may have stumbled upon a way to add a bookmark for, say, the UbuntuOne folder.

First up, I connected to a SMB server, and I found that I was able to create a bookmark for this connection. This action created the Bookmarks entry in the left pane of Nautilus. Not sure if this is really necessary - it is just what I did.

Then I right-clicked on one of the folders in the Home folder (one I did not want to Bookmark say, Videos), and selected Copy to. This opened up the Select destination window.

I could then right-click on the folder I wanted to Bookmark and add it to the Bookmarks.

After that, I could rename, or remove, the bookmark if I wanted to.

Answer 3

If you want to completely remove Public/Videos/Pictures folders in home directory, and their bookmarks in Nautilus:

cd ~
sudoedit /etc/xdg/user-dirs.conf # Change `enabled=False` to `enabled=True`
rm -r Templates Public Videos Pictures Music Documents # Remove unwanted folders
gedit ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs # Remove respective lines
sudo reboot # Or log in again