Using the KDE file picker with GTK applications

I run kde plasma on my computer. It’s not perfect, but it’s really, really good, and is currently moving at a really fast pace. This week in plasma is one of the few non-personal blogs i am subscribed to, and it’s really exciting to see the care and passion that so many people are pouring into this desktop at the moment.

But although i use the plasma desktop environment, the two programs i use the most are not KDE applications. One is emacs, and the other is firefox. Now of course emacs already lives in its own little world, and as i have mentioned before, i don’t mind that. But firefox, for all intents and purposes, is a Normal Desktop Application, and therefore i prefer that it integrates with the rest of my desktop.

Whenever i install firefox, i have a checklist of five things essential things that i need to do as soon as possible: install the ublock origin addon; install the plasma integration addon; install the keepassxc-browser addon; enable the title, menu, and bookmarks bars; and enable the tabs sidebar. Now, i have a sixth thing that i make sure to do as well. I run this command in the terminal:

echo "export GTK_USE_PORTAL=1" >> ~/.config/plasma-workspace/env/gtk_use_portal.sh

Being an application built on top of gtk, firefox defaulted to using the gtk file picker. I won’t spend any time listing things i don’t like about it, as other people have done that already, but i will say that the biggest issue for me is that it doesn’t work in the same way as dolphin and the plasma file picker that i see in all my other kde programs. Fortunately we live in the future and it takes just a single command, a logout, and a log back in, and firefox will use the file picker i know and love.

I want to end this post by saying how grateful i am to the kde people for all the work they are putting into this wonderful ecosystem of software. I hope they keep at it for a long time.