FEATURE REQUEST - Restore Tabs and locations on restart

[AtomicRobotMan0101]

 * Nemo version (nemo --version)
 * Is issue with desktop or windowed nemo?
 * Distribution - (Mint 17.2, Arch, Fedora 25, etc...)
 * Graphics hardware *and* driver used
 * 32 or 64 bit

LM 21.1 ver 5.6.8
Nemo 5.6.4
GeForce RTX2060

Issue

NEW OPTION - Tick box option in preferences to allow NEMO to store both the tabs open and the locations.

Upon restarting NEMO (or the machine) the default is changed from $HOME to whatever was opened previously.

Expected behaviour

If one previously had 5 tabs open, upon restart 5 tabs are opened. Within those tabs are the previous locations.

e.g.
1 - In the Nemo menu bar, click on "Edit" and select "Preferences."
2 - In the Preferences window, navigate to the "Behavior" tab.
3 - Under the "Startup" section, we'll find the option "Remember previous tabs and locations."

Problems

-- If the user needs to log into a remote device this may produce a flurry of prompts
-- Will not work with the current Gnome Online Accounts, in my case Google, as the BOOKMARKS/shortcutting is either broken or Gdrive is being a bastard goddam PITA (which it is)
-- For tabs "opened as root", perhaps ignore the tickbox (?)

Other information

[absami]

+1
That would be a great feature. For a start, the last set of tabs should be restored upon program launch.
Even better would be if there is a File->Save Session button to store groups of tabs under session names that may be opened together thru a File->Restore Session option.

E.g. when I am designing a PCB, I open up many folders related to components and their datasheets. But when I need to program an STM32, I need a separate group for the different sets of documents related to the MCUs . Same goes for motor related documents, same for control theory stuff and so on.
Having sets of tabs stored as sessions would be such a great help.

[AtomicRobotMan0101]

Oh, I love the idea of grouped bookmarks.

Click the group, up opens 5 tabs directly to their respective directory. Nice.

Have a few groups for different tasks. Even nicer.

DEVELOPERS!

Perhaps the directories could simply be stored in a filename with one line per tab?

N lines = N tabs.

Arbitrary filename, but the link set is opened with nemo foo.groupopenset

Users can create desktop shortcuts with this command.

Or Nemo simply looks for any *.groupopenset in ~/ (or namos conf dir) and they are simply listed in the regular bookmark pulldown.

[Jeremy7701]

Would require quite a large screen.

[AtomicRobotMan0101]

Curiously, bookmarks are kept in /home/<username>/.config/gtk-3.0/bookmarks and not something more sensible like /home/<username>/.config/nemo/bookmarks

Ugh!

---

Ignore my previous speculation about tab groups and whatnot.

Lets focus on the Original Post........

---

Now, my idea is simple.

Only need the tickbox in the Behaviour section called Restore previous tabs on NEMO open.

It could save the default list as default.groupopenset in whatever directory (as above) just in case of a crash. Lets say one of the tabs connects to something horrible that causes a crash on open... a user can simply edit this bad tab entry from the list.

End Of Request. :)

[AtomicRobotMan0101]

E.g. when I am designing a PCB, I open up many folders related to components and their datasheets. But when I need to program an STM32, I need a separate group for the different sets of documents related to the MCUs . Same goes for motor related documents, same for control theory stuff and so on.
Having sets of tabs stored as sessions would be such a great help.

Here is a way to achieve this.....

1 - from the terminal, type nemo followed by a bunch of links/directories nemo -t /home/msi/.config/gtk-3.0 /home/msi/.config/cinnamon /home/msi/Music

This will open all three links/directories in 3 tabs in the same Nemo.

...

2 - put them into an alias

e.g. using FISH alias -s foo1="nemo -t /home/msi/.config/gtk-3.0 /home/msi/.config/cinnamon /home/msi/Music"

or add the alias to the .bash_aliases or .bashrc as is ones preference.

...

3 - make an executable shell file for each group!

$nemo.STM32.sh .... nemo.mcu.sh .... nemo.datasheets.sh... etc

#!/bin/bash
nemo -t \
/home/msi/.config/gtk-3.0 \
/home/msi/.config/cinnamon \
/home/msi/Music

Simply add additional links to these files....
The slash at end of each line \ tells the shell that the command continues over multiple lines.

...

4 - Put a shortcut on the desktop for each shell file.... clickity click and pop! opens the Nemo with all ones tabs for the proposed work.

5 - Make the directory where one stores the shells as the default in Nemo, so when it opens, there is a list of ones own scripts ready to rip.

6 - Create/Drag the shortcuts (from idea 4) into Cinnamenu as items, then onto a new Panel Launcher on the screens bottom/left/whatever. Give each an appropriate icon.

[absami]

@AtomicRobotMan0101
Thanks man. I just did as you proposed and for the moment satisfies my use case.
I must add however that Linux Mint is by far the best distro, and it seems befitting for such a distro to have a powerful file manager by default.
The option of opening tabs from the last session is already available in DoubleCommander with niceties like pausable file transfer. For me however the interface of DC is too cluttered and for some reason doesn't play nice with Mint's color themes.
Anyways .. let's hope the devs could put some love into this request ;)

@absami Off-topic: there are two variants of Double Commander: GTK2 and Qt. You may have installed the Qt variant which uses a style specific to all Qt applications, and which can be customized to a certain degree through Qt5 Settings (the Qt5 Configuration Tool - qt5ct).

You can install the Gtk2 variant separately, it should obey the Mint theming much better as long as your current theme is complete for Gtk2. Please do note certain DC plug-ins may not work from one version to another, and may cause crashes if attempted to.

Also the GUI can be customized to quite a large extent but it does require time and patience. People that have in the past used Norton Commander and/or its clones in DOS, and/or Windows/Total Commander in Windows, should already be acquainted with the interface and its power.

[adrianlopezgalera]

+1

This proposal is sensational. Other file managers, like Dolphin, already have this useful feature. Now Windows 11 begins to discover the importance of tabs.

Regards.

[junglized]

It would be great to have Nemo reopening all tabs and locations from previous session. The same or at least very simmilar request has been submitted as early as in 2016, and guess what happened?...
#1861
#2110
#1260

[u2n]

@junglized wrote:
...The same or at least very simmilar request has been submitted as early as in 2016...

And even earlier requests going back to Nautilus days before that. IIRC, devs discussed that the ability was already in the code base at that time. But it wasn't implemented before the nemo fork.

If activated with a simple command line switch (Ex. "nemo last-tabs," or "...restore-session"), users could choose to click that shortcut when opening.

Been a lotta years waiting, might be many more lol. But it would be a great enhancement.

[resotek]

Restoring tabs for each open window on restart would be very useful. Proposed alternatives are not fluid because they do not automatically save the windows (workspace, size, location) and tabs. The lack of this feature drives me to other file managers or leaves me restart-phobic. What's worse is some reboots are unscheduled shutdowns, where I lose all the windows and their respective tab groups, and have to reopen multiple windows again in each of my 6 workspaces, and multiple tabs within them. Manually reopening windows and tabs is very tedious and prone to forgetting pending directories that had unresolved items.

[Jeremy7701]

Unscheduled machine shutdowns would allow nemo to write out a program 'state'.
Lock-ups or program crashes would not.

[u2n]

@Jeremy7701, what you write is true, but only if the bare minimum in session data recording were implemented (write out at end of session).

If fully embraced, OTOH, session restoration would come from data that's written in the background immediately at each change. Most web browsers, for example, work this way. Unexpected events; shutdowns, lockups, crashes, etc.; have no effect on the program's ability to restore its previous state.

===

The housekeeping seems straightforward; for each window, whenever there's a change in size, position, panes, tabs, or workspace, update that record. Delete the record when window is closed. (A small sqlite db will do?)

Restoring active cursor position in addition to the above would be awesome, but not necessary IMO.

Because nemo caches passwords, under the preference noted above may appear one related to security:
"Allow Nemo to open password-protected shares when auto-restoring the previous session"

And one similar:
"Allow Nemo to auto-mount drives..."

The workaround hack can effectively save and restore sessions, but is not nearly as desirable.

If one or more devs do take this on and succeed, it will open a new era in the history of the best linux file browser.