Right-click New File Context Menu for Nautilus / Nemo / Gnome File Manager

Super easy and light script to automate adding a context menu to Nautilus / Gnome Files to create a new document.

Although this script was originally built for a now-ancient version of Nautilus, it still works for current versions of Nautilus and Nemo file managers, as late as GNOME Shell 3.38.3

Before:

After:

Default Menu Options

• Bash Script
• PHP Script
• Text File
• Libre Office Word Document
• Markdown Document

Any menu item ins interchangeable and can be removed.

Download the automation script

Run via terminal:

git clone https://github.com/angela-d/nautilus-right-click-new-file.git && cd nautilus-right-click-new-file

Confirm you're in the right directory:

ls

You should see:

img  LICENSE  automate.sh  README.md  Templates.tar.gz

Now, run the script:

./automate.sh

If you've already used this and want to update to get the Markdown Document automagically installed, update your git repo or do a fresh clone and follow the above steps.

Updating:

That's all there is to it!

(optional) Manual Instructions

(if you don't want to run the automated script)

• Download Templates.tar.gz and extract

tar -xvzf Templates.tar.gz

• Move the extracted files (templates) into /home/youruser/Templates/

(in Nautilus; Open File Manager -> Click Home on the left -> If Templates folder does not exist, create it. If you're using a non-english language, change the name accordingly, e.g. /home/youruser/Vorlagen/ in a german environment. Creating ~/Templates/ in a non-english environment won't have any effect.)

• If your changes do not automatically appear, log out or run:

xdg-user-dirs-update

to generate the user-dirs config file.

Done!

Note

Each of the template files have a prefix like #!/bin/bash or <?php when you open the file (except the Text file & Writer/Word .doc) - while standard for the script type in question, it is also used so the operating system could interpret the type of file and automatically create the context menu icon without any extra code.

(optional) Customize your Context Menu

In Nautilus, navigate to the Home directory and then Templates.

In the Templates directory, you can place your dummy files (templates) in folders for easy sorting, or add new ones.

If your changes are not instantaneous, restart Nautilus:

nautilus -q && nautilus &

In some instances, you may have to log out and log back in.