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Nautilus Columns is a Nautilus extension that displays PDF and audio (mp3, WAV and FLAC) tags as well as EXIF metadata to the Nautilus List View. The extension has been updated recently by WebUpd8 reader Arun to work with Nautilus 3.4 so you can use it in the latest Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Update: it also works with Nautilus 3.10 / Ubuntu 14.04 and 14.10.

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
  • PDF: title, author (displayed under "Artist")

Screenshots:





To install Nautilus Columns in Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin, 14.04 Trusty Tahr or 14.10 Utopic Unicorn, use the commands below:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nautilus-columns
Then, restart Nautilus (the .deb tries to do this automatically, but just in case):
nautilus -q

Once installed, in Nautilus select Edit > Preferences and on the "List Columns" tab, enable the audio, EXIF and PDF metadata that you want to be displayed. This info is only displayed in the list view so select View > List from the Nautilus menu (or use CTRL + 2).

That's it for Ubuntu 12.04 users.

For other Linux distributions, you can download Nautilus Columns from HERE. Important: this version doesn't work with Nautilus versions older than 3.4! To install it, extract the archive and copy the "bsc-v2.py" file to one of the following folders (if they don't exist, create it):
  • for the current user: ~/.local/share/nautilus-python/extensions/
  • for all users: /usr/share/nautilus-python/extensions/
You'll also need to install some dependencies: python-nautilus, python-mutagen, python-pyexiv2, python-kaa-metadata, libnautilus-extension1a and python-pypdf (they might have a different name, depending on your the Linux distribution). After you've installed everything, remember to restart Nautilus.

Thanks to Arun for porting Nautilus Columns to Nautilus 3.4+!