The Linux Experiment

The default sort order in Nautilus has been changed to sorting alphabetically by name and the option to change this seems to be broken. For example I prefer my files to be sorted by type so I ran

dconf-editor

and browsed to org/gnome/nautilus/preferences. From there you should be able to change the value by using the drop down:

Seems easy enough

Unfortunately the only option available is modification time. Once you change it to that you can’t even go back to name. This also appears to be a problem when trying to set the value using the command line interface like this:

dconf write /org/gnome/nautilus/preferences/default-sort-order type

I received an “error: 0-4:unknown keyword” message when I tried to run that.

Thanks to the folks over on the Ask Ubuntu forum I was finally able to get it to change by issuing this command instead:

gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences default-sort-order type

where type could be swapped out for whatever you prefer it to be ordered by.

Great Success!