How to get Thunar file dialogs instead of Nautilus? (maybe related to niri-portals.conf)

[sondhg]

Hello, I saw many YT videos of yours about Niri, and I was interested in your dotfiles config, hence I landed here. I noticed that you used Thunar instead of Nautilus as your GUI file manager.

While the default file manager for Niri is Nautilus, I do think that Thunar is far better. However, I've struggled to make Thunar work properly on Niri, specifically the file dialogs.

Here is the only Niri documentation related to this problem that I could find:
https://niri-wm.github.io/niri/Important-Software.html#portals

Portals require running niri as a session, which means through the niri-session script or from a display manager. You will want the following portals installed:

• xdg-desktop-portal-gtk: implements most of the basic functionality, this is the "default fallback portal".
• xdg-desktop-portal-gnome: required for screencasting support.
• gnome-keyring: implements the Secret portal, required for certain apps to work.

Then systemd should start them on-demand automatically. These particular portals are configured in niri-portals.conf which must be installed in the correct location.

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.

The Niri docs is quite confusing, it said If you do not want to install nautilus ... as if it was a choice. xdg-desktop-portal-gnome is required for screencasting, and nautilus is a dependency of it. So I'd have to keep Nautilus on my system, I can just choose not to use it.

Moving on, the only niri-portals.conf file I could find on my system is /usr/share/xdg-desktop-portal/niri-portals.conf. By default, its content is:

[preferred]
default=gnome;gtk;
org.freedesktop.impl.portal.Access=gtk;
org.freedesktop.impl.portal.Notification=gtk;
org.freedesktop.impl.portal.Secret=gnome-keyring;

Based on the Niri docs, I added the line org.freedesktop.impl.portal.FileChooser=gtk; at the end of this file.

However, even after reboot, all file dialogs (Select a file, Save as file, ...) are still Nautilus dialogs.

I even tried to remove xdg-desktop-portal-gnome, then installed nemo to exactly follow the docs but also no luck.

I saw Thunar working just fine for you, so I thought you might have the solution to this problem. How did you get Thunar file dialogs to work on Niri? Thank you!

[nickjj]

Hi,

It's really funny on the timing of your post. I almost made a video earlier today (for Tuesday) on my entire Thunar set up but I wasn't happy that I didn't have an answer to your question because it's also something I haven't figured out yet.

I do have ~/.config/xdg-desktop-portal/niri-portals.conf which should overwrite the portal file installed by niri:

[preferred]
default=gnome;gtk;
org.freedesktop.impl.portal.Access=gtk;
org.freedesktop.impl.portal.FileChooser=gtk;
org.freedesktop.impl.portal.Notification=gtk;
org.freedesktop.impl.portal.Secret=gnome-keyring;

I didn't commit it back up to my dotfiles yet because I noticed the same thing as you. Despite having a FileChooser entry to change the default behavior, it doesn't use Thunar.

I went as far as renaming the nautilus binary but it still loads something that resembles Nautilus. Maybe it's loading something that looks like Nautilus while not being Nautilus? It does show gtk as being the FileChooser for sure:

$ /usr/lib/xdg-desktop-portal -v 2>&1 | grep -i "FileChooser"
XDP: Preferred portals for interface 'org.freedesktop.impl.portal.FileChooser': gtk
XDP: portal implementation supports org.freedesktop.impl.portal.FileChooser
XDP: portal implementation supports org.freedesktop.impl.portal.FileChooser
XDP: Found 'gtk' in configuration for org.freedesktop.impl.portal.FileChooser
XDP: Using gtk.portal for org.freedesktop.impl.portal.FileChooser (config)
XDP: providing portal org.freedesktop.portal.FileChooser

Preliminary Googling is showing that Thunar might not have a file picker and when you set gtk as we've done, we're using the GTK file chooser which happens to look the same as Nautilus since they both use the same internal libraries.

In which case, this custom FileChooser line doesn't have an impact. Btw running /usr/lib/xdg-desktop-portal -v 2>&1 | grep -i "FileChooser" after removing it no longer shows the gtk line so I wonder if it's possible to test these things without rebooting or logging out.

I wonder what else we could explore.

On the bright side, at least it shares the same theme and bookmarks as Thunar since they are both GTK apps. I don't like that it has its own generated thumbnails though.

Also if you're using my dotfiles I do have inode/directory=thunar.desktop; set in ~/.config/mimeapps.list so at least Thunar gets spawned with xdg-open . or anything that launches something to open a directory.

[sondhg]

Despite having a FileChooser entry to change the default behavior, it doesn't use Thunar.

Maybe it's loading something that looks like Nautilus while not being Nautilus?

Thunar might not have a file picker and when you set gtk as we've done, we're using the GTK file chooser which happens to look the same as Nautilus since they both use the same internal libraries.

Also if you're using my dotfiles I do have inode/directory=thunar.desktop; set in ~/.config/mimeapps.list so at least Thunar gets spawned with xdg-open . or anything that launches something to open a directory.

I'm glad it isn't just me that's been facing these issues! I spent the day reading through Arch Wiki - XDG Desktop Portal and dozens of Q&A forums, and I can confirm everything you said here is correct.

At this point, for file dialogs, we can only use what comes with one of the portals we installed.

I checked this Issue #3068 on the Nemo repo, looks like many people also hate the limitations of Nautilus and the Nautilus-lookalike GTK file picker.

The most annoying thing for me has to be this behavior (Here my file dialog is the GTK one). Let's say I wanna change the file type before saving a file. I would have to hold my mouse on the filetype dropdown, then drag mouse up and down, then release mouse on the filetype I want to select it. I'd like to just click the drop down, hover my mouse freely, then click the filetype I want, like how we do it with Dolphin on KDE or literally the File Explorer on Windows. This GNOME/GTK behavior, where it auto closes the filetype selection dialog as soon as I release my mouse, really drives me insane.

2026-03-30.00-11-08.mp4

Finally, I guess we will still have to keep a Nemo/Thunar window opened side by side when we want to drag & drop some files with them. Oh well.

I also use a TUI file manager (Yazi). With a bit of extra config, it would allow drag & drop as well: Drag and drop via dragon , Copy selected files to the system clipboard while yanking. Still gotta keep a Yazi window side by side with whatever window we're working on though, but it is a little faster thanks to fzf file searching.

Eventually there is xdg-desktop-portal-termfilechooser, which would allow TUI file managers like Yazi to do this: Yazi as your system file chooser. I'm not ready for a TUI to be my file picker dialogs, and considering xdg-desktop-portal-termfilechooser is from the AUR, I wouldn't try this approach though.

Hopefully these info can be useful to you. Thank you for the detailed reply. It is always nice when I can find someone also encountering these little but annoying issues, so I can be assured that it's not me breaking my system somehow!

[nickjj]

Now that you mentioned Dolphin, that got me to Googling around even further. I don't think I'll switch to it but I found https://www.reddit.com/r/niri/comments/1r5mdlo/arch_use_dolphin_instead_of_nautilus_in_firefox/ which has a bunch of very useful information.

It shows how you can set a different picker, in this context it's related to Firefox but there's a couple of commands in there that you can run now to verify which picker is being used, independent of Firefox. It could help with future debugging and understanding the wonderful world of xdg portals.

For example, if I run:

dbus-send --session --dest=org.freedesktop.FileManager1 --print-reply --type=method_call /org/freedesktop/FileManager1 org.freedesktop.FileManager1.ShowItems array:string:"file:///" string:""

Then busctl --user list while the file dialog is open, in this output for FileManager1 I see nautilus :

org.freedesktop.FileManager1        32420 nautilus        nick :1.101        user@1000.service -       -

That unlocks a way to set FileChooser=kde to use Dolphin instead of Nautilus for everything. That Reddit post also links to https://www.reddit.com/r/niri/comments/1qcm5cd/not_really_a_guide_to_setup_dolphin_kde_file/ which covers that in more detail.

Thanks for the links, one day I will look into Yazi. Drag / dropping and viewing thumbnails before opening an image / video is mostly what I use Thunar for. Also, sometimes just seeing everything visually helps a lot. Technically Thunar auto mounts USB drives too which I like but that could be easily solved in other ways.

[sondhg]

Fellas on Reddit never fail to amaze me. That second link is a gem! Looks like quite a bit of work to get Dolphin working properly on Niri, but very interesting info there. Personally I try to avoid using Dolphin or KDE apps in general in WMs, so for now I'll stick with Thunar as file manager and the GTK portal for file chooser dialogs.

It's really funny on the timing of your post. I almost made a video earlier today (for Tuesday) on my entire Thunar set up but I wasn't happy that I didn't have an answer to your question because it's also something I haven't figured out yet.

I got the info I needed, so I think it's a good time to close this discussion. I'm looking forward to your Thunar video. Again, thank you for all the help!

[nickjj]

No problem, I will make it sooner than later, maybe in a week or 2. I can't escape kdenlive unfortunately, but at least its dependencies don't leak into my day to day dialogs.