How to Change the Folder Color in Ubuntu

One of the most requested features for Ubuntu is the ability to change the color of the folders, but that's not something that will land in Nautilus anytime soon. The good news is that there is a little tool out there that can do the job just as well.

Linux users like to change the way their desktop looks and acts, and they can do pretty much anything they want to, for the most part. There are some limitations of course, but most of the time it's just the developer's lack of time to deal with a certain feature. This was made very clear in the case of Ubuntu, which already got a few requests regarding this particular feature.

Ubuntu devs marked this as "won't fix," which means it's not happening, at least not anytime soon. Users went upstream and tried to request this feature in Nautilus (from the GNOME stack), but it wasn't a no go. Fortunately, sometimes the community is well ahead of the developers and Marcos Costales has built Folder Color to fix this issue.

Folder Color works in most distros

If you have Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, openSUSE, Arch Linux, or pretty much anything that has Nautilus, Nemo or the Caja File Browser, then you'll be able to make all the changes you want to the folders. We'll focus on Ubuntu since many distros have already implemented this tool. We're looking at you, Ubuntu MATE.

All you need to do in order to get the application is to enter a few commands in a terminal near you. You will need to be root, but that's pretty well understood:

CODE
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:costales/folder-color
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install folder-color
nautilus -q
Now, when you're opening a Nautilus (Files), you will find a Folder Color entry. Also, it's worth pointing out that Folder Color works with the Numix, Vibrancy Colors, and Vivacious Colors themes.

Enjoy!