Display Extensive Media Information In Nautilus, Nemo Or Caja Using MediaInfo Tab Extension

If you want to see an in-depth media information directly from your file manager, be it Nautilus, Nemo, or Caja, there's an extension for each of these file managers that implements this functionality.

The Nautilus / Nemo / Caja MediaInfo Tab extension makes use of the MediaInfo utility, which displays technical and tag data for audio and video files.

MediaInfo can display information like the format, codec, frame and bit rate, encoding settings, tags (id3v2, id3v2, etc.) like the artist, album or track name, subtitles format and compression, the writing application and library, and much more.

The extension add a new tab to the file manager properties dialog (accessible by right clicking on an audio or video file and selecting Properties). Here's the extension in action using Nautilus, Nemo and Caja file managers:

MediaInfo Tab Nautilus
MediaInfo tab in Nautilus (default Gnome file manager)

Media Info Tab Nemo
MediaInfo Tab used with Nemo (the default Cinnamon file manager)

Media Info Caja
MediaInfo Tab used with Caja (the default MATE file manager)

MediaInfo Tab doesn't support translations, so you'll get media information in English only right now, but this is on the todo list.

Also see: Download Subtitles Via Right Click From File Manager Or Command Line With OpenSubtitlesDownload.py (supports Nautilus, Nemo and Caja).

Install MediaInfo Tab extension for Nautilus, Nemo or Caja


Download the Nautilus, Nemo or Caja MediaInfo Tab extension from these GitHub project pages (includes DEB packages and the Python source/script):


For Caja built with Gtk2 (Ubuntu 16.04 and Linux Mint 18 without some PPA that upgrades MATE / Caja to a Gtk3 version), download the caja-mediainfo-tab-gtk2_0.1_all.deb package, while for Caja built with Gtk3 (Ubuntu 18.04 / Linux Mint 19) use the caja-mediainfo-tab_0.1_all.deb package.

If you install the extension from source, make sure you install the python-mediainfodll dependency, as well as the file manager Python bindings (python-nautilus for Nautilus, etc.).

After installing the extension, make sure you restart the file manager to get it to work. You can do this using the following command in a terminal:

  • Nautilus:
nautilus -q

  • Nemo:
nemo -q

  • Caja:
caja -q

All three extensions are also available in a PPA, which you can use in Ubuntu, and Ubuntu-based Linux distributions like Linux Mint.