Add mp3, WAV and EXIF Columns to Your Nautilus View

Wow I am actually quite amazed that this sort of a thing is not already integrated into the Nautilus file manager. It seems such a basic thing to be able to add additional columns to the file viewer of your choice. I hunted all over the Nautilus options before I started looking online. I can vouch for this solution below, I just did it myself. And here is the link to the guy that deserves the credit for this work.

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A long time ago, we wrote about a Nautilus extension (called Nautilus Columns) which adds music (mp3, WAV and FLAC) and EXIF metadata info to the Nautilus List View. Well, I though I'd rescue this extension (as it's no longer packaged as a .deb) and upload it to the WebUpd8 PPA so it can be easily installed.

Here's a Nautilus screenshot before using this extension:

And after:

The extension supports displaying the following info in the Nautilus list view columns:

• mp3, WAV, FLAC: artist, track, album, title, bitrate, date, genre, length and sample rate
• EXIF: dateshot, image size, software and flash

To install the Nautilus Columns extension (in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx and 10.10 Maverick Meerkat), use the following commands:

<code>sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nautilus-columns</code>

Once installed, it should automatically restart Nautilus but in case it doesn't, manually restart Nautilus using the following command:

<code>nautilus -q</code>

Then go to Edit > Preferences > List Columns and check the columns you want to see. Then navigate to a folder where you have some music files and switch Nautilus to the List View (View > List, or by using the Nautilus Elementary view widget).

Now there's only one thing missing: being able to play the music directly in Nautilus (no, the music preview built into Nautilus is not what I'm looking for).

I've tested the package on both Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10 32bit. Since it's written in Python, there shouldn't be any issues on 64bit, however note that I didn't test it on 64bit. Update: Zagrux posted a comment below confirming he tested it on 64bit and it works (I was unsure about the dependencies).