Ubuntu 18.04 Desktop – How to set ‘view items as a list’ as default

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By default in Ubuntu 16.04 (and above) files and folders are displayed as a grid of icons.

The following steps show how to change this so files and folders are shown as a list.

  1. Press Ctrl + Alt + T on your keyboard to open the terminal
  2. Run the following command
  3. gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences default-folder-viewer 'list-view'
  5. Files and folder will now be shown in list view by default