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Its so annoying tbh. Ctrl+L works. But not in everything like Firefox. Why can't we have a better file explorer! I'm honestly wayyy faster with windows file explorer because the filepath is always there.
Alt+d in Firefox. And pcmanfm for a decent file explorer with the path visible and editable. Simple toggle option in the options.
Omg I never knew about ctrl+L. Life saver. I have no idea why Linux file pickers/file browsers don't seem to have an editable (and copy-pasteable) path field.
I know man its the worst!! So many little things like this are why Linux devs need a real world person on their team, I feel .
Cue the xkcd comic about minerals and how its crazy to think the average person only knows cobalt etc whatever it is lol. Devs need normies to do testing
Why can't we have a better file explorer
Dolphin?
Not working on Nemo (cinnamon)
Ctrl L won't work?? Odd. Try alt+D.
I use nemo in cinnamon also
At some point Linux desktops bought into that whole 'less is more' religion that plagues Windows, and started to hide crucial things like file paths in the name of esthetics and to not confront the poor simple users with the ugliness of the Unix file system tree. This is the result.
That's just gnome being gnome
Nah, KDE also hides the path, you have to click to see it.
oh yeah but setting that as a default in KDE is way easier
my point is KDE at least gives you plenty of options right away to customize your DE, meanwhile in GNOME you need extensions for most things
I haven't run into any file managers that hide the path with no option to show it. Which one(s) are you talking about?
I did not imply "no option to show it". You can see it, it's just not out in the open like it used to be.
That looks like Ubuntu, which I believe uses a modified version of Nautilus for the file manager. Hitting CTRL-L (for "location") should give you a path bar to type into.
Seems the Debian chain (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint) hide it by default but there is an option to enable it. It's one of the first things I do because I use it a lot.
I think they're all using Nemo (depending on desktop)? Not at home to check it currently (Debian 13 at home, Mint on bootable USB drives).
... Don't trust me on Ubuntu, I haven't used it since the telemetry debacle.
Run XFCE and use Thunar. : )
I use Nemo in XFCE and the file path is always there.
which file manager are you using? i have gnome's files and it lets me specify the path by click on the current folder name and it looks like you're using the same thing.
this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2026
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