Why Is Eclipse Removing the Navigator View?

Building off of nitind and osoblanco's suggestions: You can make Project Explorer look exactly like the deprecated Navigator view by the following steps:

1. Click Window->Show View->Project Explorer
2. Click the three vertical dots in the top right corner of the Project Explorer Pane.
3. Click "Filters and Customization..."
4. In the "Pre-set filters" tab, uncheck "Java output folders" (thanks osoblanco for this tip)
5. In the "Content" tab, uncheck "Java Elements"

I didn't see any difference between Flat or Hierarchical in the Project presentation, so I left it as the default. I'm using Eclipse IDE for Java Developers version 2020-09. All of my projects use the default package, so I don't really need to see "Java Elements".

I guess they figure they are supporting it well enough if you spend time configuring. For me this gets close enough I suppose...

Hit the 3 dots in the top right. -Set the "Package Presentation" to hierarchical. -Alter Filters and Customization. Uncheck "Java output folders" so that they show.

You should be able to get the same results with the Project Explorer view--just configure the contents to only show resources and nothing fancier.

Indeed, it would be a shame to remove the "Navigator" view because it's the simplest way to get an overview with all files. Personally I use it frequently (typically for Git) and I hope it will be kept in future versions.

However, it is true that it is also possible to do the same thing with "Project explorer" with a bit of customization. To do this, you just have to remove all filters (used to hide certain files) and select all file types to be displayed.

Here's how:

open the "Project explorer" view (from the main menu : Window > Show View > Project Explorer)

in the "Project explorer" view : open "Filters and Customization" ("funnel" icon or "3 dots" icon + "Filters and Customization" )

in "Filters and Customization" dialog box :

• in "Predefined filters": uncheck all checkboxes
• in "User filters" : remove all filters if any (nothing by default)
• in "Content" tab (used to define extensions to show) : select all available extensions (in order to show everything)

With this configuration you will see all the files located in the project (whatever the type of project, Java or other).