If you’re like me, you like the option of being able to open certain applications on the fly, simply by selecting them from your right click menu. It is possible to add your most used, or any applications to the Ubuntu right click menu with a tool called Nautilus Actions.

1. The first thing you need to do is install the Nautilus Actions application:

sudo apt-get install nautilus-actions

2. After it is installed, navigate to your System > Preferences menu and select Nautilus Actions Configuration

You should now see the Nautilus Actions main screen

3. Click the Add button and you should see the Add a New Action screen

4. Fill out the Menu Item & Action properties with whatever you would like in your right click menu. Above, you can see I am using VLC as an example.

Next, click on the Conditions tab.

5. Under the Conditions tab you need to make sure that Both is selected under “Appears if selections contains”.

Next, click on Advanced Conditions

6. First, uncheck the “File / Local Files” box. Second, in order for the menu items you add to appear every time you right click, you will need to add a blank entry under the Advanced Conditions. To do this, click on the + and erase “new-scheme” and “new-scheme description” so that both entries are blank.

7. Click OK.

8. You now have added your first right click menu item. In order for the item to appear on your right click menu, you need to restart the nautilus daemon.

killall -HUP nautilus

Now you should be able to see the VLC media player on the right click menu.

To continue adding more items to the menu, repeat steps 3 through 8 until you are satisfied.