GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 751589
Offer the possiblity, as an option, to display the free disk space in the form of a nice little bar
Last modified: 2015-07-06 11:20:20 UTC
Created attachment 306199 [details] Nautilus mockup (arc theme) with a nice little bar to display the free space Hello, These days a lot of cheap computers, chromebooks, tablets and 2 in 1 come with very small drives (16 to 64 Gb SDD/eMMC). It can be really easy to rapidly fulfill them. So, it's useful to be aware if you have, or don't have, some free space left. A personnal exemple: For a hobby I do some php coding, so I have a LAMP server on my computer. I have a SDD with a 30Gb root partition. There is about 15Gb free and I thinked that won't change much over time (all app installed, an other partition for my data, etc...). Recently that partition become full because apache, by default, write a lot of logs. So because you don't have an idea about how free space is available in Nautilus, unless you go in the properties of that partition, I didn't see the partion become full over time. I propose, as on option, to offer the possiblity to display the free space in the form of a nice little bar like you can see in the attachment. What do you think ?
Created attachment 306323 [details] Joli OS
Created attachment 306324 [details] Marlin
Created attachment 306325 [details] Nemo
Created attachment 306326 [details] Windows 10 explorer
I added some exemples for you to see what the others files manager do about the free disk space. I really think that we can add this feature and keep the soft really sleek.
Created attachment 306347 [details] Nautilus mockup (adwaita default theme) with a nice little bar to display the free disk space
Designers said that this is not an information that should be needed always, but instead just sometimes. So it's not necessary to have it always visible. Anyway, marking as ui-review to have the voice of designers.
I agree, for most people it's not necessary to have it always visible. But on the other hand a lot of people need it. Not to mention the one that simply want it. That's why I propose this as an option as it can't hurt Nautilus to provide uselful features for the users and keep it clean, beautiful and uncluttered.
Created attachment 306422 [details] Mockup of the free disk space option
I agree that this information isn't needed always. What do you think about Nautilus displaying free space and other information in a popup when user hovers over the disk in the sidebar? Currently Nautilus displays only path to the drive in the popup when the user hovers over the drive in the sidebar as seen in the picture attached.
(In reply to Марко Костић (Marko Kostić) from comment #10) > I agree that this information isn't needed always. What do you think about > Nautilus displaying free space and other information in a popup when user > hovers over the disk in the sidebar? > > Currently Nautilus displays only path to the drive in the popup when the > user hovers over the drive in the sidebar as seen in the picture attached. Forgot to include the link to the screenshot. http://www.dodaj.rs/f/1g/10O/23Q3zqkI/---2015-07-03-12-14-19.png
(In reply to Марко Костић (Marko Kostić) from comment #11) > (In reply to Марко Костић (Marko Kostić) from comment #10) > > I agree that this information isn't needed always. ... A normal user doesn't know what to do with the path to the drive. So I think replacing it with the free space may be a possible solution, although I would love to see a nice litte bar myself.
(In reply to Марко Костић (Marko Kostić) from comment #10) > I agree that this information isn't needed always. What do you think about > Nautilus displaying free space and other information in a popup when user > hovers over the disk in the sidebar? > > Currently Nautilus displays only path to the drive in the popup when the > user hovers over the drive in the sidebar as seen in the picture attached. That can be useful too, of course in addition to the feature suggested.
+1 for having level bar in a tooltip, not in the widget itself.
(In reply to Cédric Bellegarde from comment #14) > +1 for having level bar in a tooltip, not in the widget itself. Why not but Nautilus should give the option to display it in widget itself.
(In reply to jeremy9856 from comment #15) > (In reply to Cédric Bellegarde from comment #14) > > +1 for having level bar in a tooltip, not in the widget itself. > > Why not but Nautilus should give the option to display it in widget itself. That kind of information isn't needed always. Also, why bother modifying widget code to support something which won't be on by default and which probably won't be used a lot (because it's not on by default) when you can get the same feature by just modifying part of code, which is already used, to just display free space on the drive (beside the path and maybe a file system used on the drive)? Also, displaying this info in the popup will take less space than adding a bar bellow the widget and it would fulfill the desire to not have this kind of information always visible.
Read my bug report (first message) and you will see that can be really useful to have the possibility to always display the free space. The default settings are importants but a little choice and option is never a bad thing.
(In reply to jeremy9856 from comment #17) > Read my bug report (first message) and you will see that can be really > useful to have the possibility to always display the free space. (In reply to jeremy9856 from comment #0) > Created attachment 306199 [details] > A personnal exemple: > For a hobby I do some php coding, so I have a LAMP server on my computer. I > have a SDD with a 30Gb root partition. There is about 15Gb free and I > thinked that won't change much over time (all app installed, an other > partition for my data, etc...). Recently that partition become full because > apache, by default, write a lot of logs. So because you don't have an idea > about how free space is available in Nautilus, unless you go in the > properties of that partition, I didn't see the partion become full over time. Your use case is already covered. If your drive starts getting full, Gnome Shell will display a notification about it and ask you if you want to inspect the drive with baobab to see what is taking space on the drive (you can also choose to ignore the notification).
(In reply to Марко Костић (Marko Kostić) from comment #18) > Your use case is already covered. If your drive starts getting full, Gnome > Shell will display a notification about it and ask you if you want to > inspect the drive with baobab to see what is taking space on the drive (you > can also choose to ignore the notification). I know but when the notification appear it's already too late, the disk is almost full... In my exemple it take weeks to fulfil the drive with unwanted apache logs. If the option was available I could see this a lot of time before it was too late.
(In reply to jeremy9856 from comment #19) > (In reply to Марко Костић (Marko Kostić) from comment #18) > > Your use case is already covered. If your drive starts getting full, Gnome > > Shell will display a notification about it and ask you if you want to > > inspect the drive with baobab to see what is taking space on the drive (you > > can also choose to ignore the notification). > > I know but when the notification appear it's already too late, the disk is > almost full... > In my exemple it take weeks to fulfil the drive with unwanted apache logs. > If the option was available I could see this a lot of time before it was too > late. That's a valid statement. I propose to wait for a comment from a designer to see what's the best route for displaying this kind of information.
Created attachment 306700 [details] Nautilus WIP interface mockup Many drives on this mockup. Remember it's an option not the default design. Here is the default WIP design (https://github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/tree/master/nautilus/nautilus-next).
(In reply to Марко Костић (Marko Kostić) from comment #18) > Your use case is already covered. If your drive starts getting full, Gnome > Shell will display a notification about it and ask you if you want to > inspect the drive with baobab to see what is taking space on the drive (you > can also choose to ignore the notification). If you are going to copy a huge amount of big files to your PC (doesn't matter if from a samba share or a usb flashdrive), you get this message somewhere halfway through the process which isn't helpful at all. (It would actually be better if you could get a warning before copying the files, that the available storage doesn't suffice). When you have a lot of partitions/disks, it would be better if you could see directly which partition/disk would be able to save all these files to, without hovering over each one to see its current capacity. So I guess showing a little horizontal bar in the left column would be the easiest way to achieve this.
Putting things in the tooltip is not disruptive, so that solution is fine per se. However I wonder if there is some way to make it work as well for touch devices. Maybe improving the rigth click menu?
(In reply to markus.lobedann from comment #22) > > If you are going to copy a huge amount of big files to your PC (doesn't > matter if from a samba share or a usb flashdrive), you get this message > somewhere halfway through the process which isn't helpful at all. (It would > actually be better if you could get a warning before copying the files, that > the available storage doesn't suffice). > Doesn't Nautilus check if the destination drive has enough free space before copying data to it? > When you have a lot of partitions/disks, it would be better if you could see > directly which partition/disk would be able to save all these files to, > without hovering over each one to see its current capacity. So I guess > showing a little horizontal bar in the left column would be the easiest way > to achieve this. You can see this information in the gnome-system-monitor tool, in the "File Systems" part of the program.
(In reply to Carlos Soriano from comment #23) > Putting things in the tooltip is not disruptive, so that solution is fine > per se. > However I wonder if there is some way to make it work as well for touch > devices. Maybe improving the rigth click menu? Having the free space available in the tooltip is a good thing but the point of the request is to be able (as an option) to have this info without the need to do an action.
Note that almost every other files manager let the user constantly display the free disk space one way or an other. - Dolphin: in the status bar - Nemo: with a little bar and in the status bar - Windows explorer: with a little bar and in the status bar - Marlin: with a little bar - Thunar: in the status bar - Pcmanfm: in the status bar
It would be nice indeed to somehow have the indication of free space in certain situations, in a more direct way, I'd say when the storage is smaller then a certain size (say 128GB?) or when it's almost full (say 80%?). What I'd like to know though is the actuall free space of the given location, the percentage alone won't tell me if the stuff I'm planning to copy there will fit. I'm totally agaist spending an option for such a thing though.
jeremy: Thanks for rekindling the discussion about how to improve the display of information about disk usage and free space. This particular question has already been reported and discussed in bug 684943, so I'm marking it as a duplicate. A strong point of this bug report is that you describe a real life problem which happened to you: the lack of awareness over time that a partition was getting full. Such real life situations are useful to know and help in the process of making design decisions. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 684943 ***
Lapo, I agree with your insigths. If you have some mockups, please tell me.
Or if someone has more ideas about where and how to show the remaining space. As said, I agree with lapo that percentage doesn't help...