Explicitly route FileChooser to gtk in portals.conf

[mdread]

I ran into an issue where file picker dialogs (downloads, save as, open file) silently fail on niri when Nautilus isn't installed.

The problem is that niri-portals.conf sets default=gnome;gtk; but doesn't explicitly route FileChooser. So xdg-desktop-portal-gnome picks it up first and tries to delegate to Nautilus, which isn't there if you're not running a full GNOME desktop. The dialog just never shows up: no error, nothing.

My setup is NixOS with niri + xdg-desktop-portal-gnome + xdg-desktop-portal-gtk, no Nautilus. I noticed it in Zen Browser (Firefox-based), but it would affect any app that uses the portal for file dialogs.

Adding this line to niri-portals.conf fixes it:

org.freedesktop.impl.portal.FileChooser=gtk;

Which is consistent with how Access and Notification are already explicitly routed to gtk in the same file.

For now, I'm working around it by overriding the whole portal config at the system level, but that means I'd miss any future changes you make to the defaults.

I can open a PR if any of the maintainers prefer and consider this change useful.

Thanks!

[HigherOrderLogic]

It is already mentioned in the docs.

Iirc Nixos Niri module also has an option to install Nautilus alongside the Gnome portal.

[mdread]

@HigherOrderLogic i totally missed that, you are right it is clearly stated in docs:

Note that if you're using the provided resources/niri-portals.conf, you also need to install the nautilus file manager in order for file chooser dialogues to work properly. This is necessary because xdg-desktop-portal-gnome uses nautilus as the file chooser by default starting from version 47.0.

If you do not want to install nautilus (say you use nemo instead), you can set org.freedesktop.impl.portal.FileChooser=gtk; in niri-portals.conf to use the GTK portal for file chooser dialogues.

I still wonder if it's worth setting FileChooser to gtk by default as already is for Notification and Access. Is there a reason not to that you know of?

[HigherOrderLogic]

Is there a reason not to that you know of?

Idk.

But most popular distro packaged Gnome portal with Nautilus as deps.

[mdread]

But most popular distro packaged Gnome portal with Nautilus as deps.

I get that, it's just that in NixOS nautilus is not a dependency for xdg-desktop-portal-gnome.

Searching for nautilus in the codebase gives me just that one hit from docs, it seems the only reason to require nautilus is because gnome portal just happens to delegate FileChooser to it by default.

Personally if i see a dependency that can be removed i go for it.

I guess i'll leave the issue open for a couple of days just to see if anyone has other insight about it and close it after.

[YaLTeR]

The default will remain gnome until possibly there's an xdp-n that can fallback