How do I make new Nautilus windows show the same folder as the original window?

Question

I want to achieve the following:

• I have a Nautilus windows showing the /foo/bar dir.
• I hit Ctrl+n (new window).
• I want the new window to show /foo/bar instead of my home dir.

Answer 1

There is no option for changing or customizing the New Window action behavior.

But you can create a nautilus script with the behavior you want and use it instead of the built in action. It's a one-liner that simply opens Nautilus at a given folder. In your case, the current folder. Save the script at ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts (~/.local/share/nautilus/scripts for Ubuntu 13.04 onwards).

To invoke such script with CTRL+N you must edit ~/.gnome2/accels/nautilus (~/.local/share/nautilus/accels for 13.04+) and edit the corresponding lines for both your script and New Window builtin action.

You could also request this feature at gnome buglist for Nautilus:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/browse.cgi?product=nautilus

Answer 2

This Nautilus script should do the trick:

#!/bin/bash
# opens new Nautilus window showing the same folder

nautilus "$NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_CURRENT_URI"

General installation instructions for Nautilus scripts and assigning Nautilus keyboard shortcuts.