Post #612757

2026-03-09 21:52 UTC

The GTK file picker Firefox wants to use by default is meh. I&#39;m not sure why it doesn&#39;t use the one provided by the OS when it&#39;s just one about:config tweak away. Change widget.use-xdg-desktop-portal.file-picker from 2 to 1 and you get the much, much better KDE file picker. Assuming you&#39;re using @kde of course. It&#39;s been a problem for ages on multiple operating systems, not a new thing. At least now you don&#39;t have to set environment variables and change startup scripts. #Linux #KDE

Replies (10)

@jimp@masto.ai 2026-03-09 22:11

It's frustrating sometimes because it does work properly on Mint w/Cinnamon; With the default value of 2 it uses Cinnamon's file picker. But I've had the same issue on FreeBSD and other Linux distros using KDE.

Open ##2478476
@RootMoose@mstdn.ca 2026-03-09 21:57

@jimp@masto.ai @kde@floss.social HA! You just made my day - possibly the week!

Open ##2478477
@npub1wkhmr74djpmtl3cc3424s8hrpdepu0ghw08f8aexgx894cxfd8ss4vc8sg@momostr.pink 2026-03-09 22:29

Zap

Open ##2478478
@fonos@mstdn.social 2026-03-09 22:57

@jimp@masto.ai @kde@floss.social This should become the default in the next release version: https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/149.0beta/releasenotes/

Open ##2478479
@lispi314@udongein.xyz 2026-03-10 05:07

@jimp@masto.ai @kde@floss.social Honestly it might be better with a variable because then I could just put a wrapper script so it always does it right regardless of the profile. Instead depending on how the default settings are baked in I may have to rebuild firefox from scratch (which gets ridiculous with its memory requirements because C++ sucks I guess). edit: Debian users rejoice, you can just patch /usr/share/firefox-esr/browser/defaults/preferences/firefox.js.

Open ##2478481
@Someplaceunknown@mastodon.social 2026-03-10 05:45

@jimp@masto.ai omg I never knew this before, thanks soo much for mentioning it. @kde@floss.social

Open ##2478483
@Kdude@mastodon.social 2026-03-10 05:51

@jimp@masto.ai @kde@floss.social thank you <3

Open ##2478484
@filiprund@mas.to 2026-03-10 19:23

@jimp@masto.ai @kde@floss.social this is great, and it also works on Gnome

Open ##2478485
@ringods@hachyderm.io 2026-03-19 17:52

@jimp@masto.ai @kde@floss.social Is this something which can be configured system wide and be picked up by Firefox automatically?

Open ##2478486
@sneufeind@chaos.social 2026-03-29 17:26

@jimp@masto.ai @kde@floss.social I wondered in what way it looks different, tried, didn't spot a difference and found that I was on Firefox 149 already. :-) But it helped me fix my #Thunderbird file-dialog for #KDE in the same way. Is there an official patch also coming for TB?

Open ##2478488