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When browsing files, the fastest way for me to navigate is with the keyboard. All "sensible" file browsers enable this by automatically selecting the folder when you type the first few letters of that folder. Some time ago, Ubuntu (I don't remember which version started this horrible practice) disabled this in Nautilus and replaced it with a (very slow) search option.

After multiple failed attempts to retrieve the old way of navigation, I eventually installed nemo and made it my default file browser. All was perfect, but Nautilus continues to haunt me through Firefox (or so I think).

The default file manager for the save and open dialog boxes of Firefox seems to be Nautilus. It is quite frustrating to navigate through files in this dialog box.

  1. The folders are arranged very haphazardly (I think it is sorted by last accessed, but I almost never find the folder I want at the top)
  2. Attempting to navigate by typing letters starts a search.
  3. You cannot even drag this dialog box around - it seems to be locked into the window (it is frankly astonishing how the most fundamental aspects of a windowed operating system is being broken by this "new and updated browser") Edit: This is a fault of gnome, and can be corrected thanks to this post.

I tried editing /usr/share/applications/defaults.list and /usr/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache as suggested here. I even tried the somewhat hack-job method suggested here, but to no avail. The solution given in what seems to the most recent post on this is attempting to use Nautilus which is contrary to my problem.

I am a bit wary of uninstalling Nautilus as I don't know how many other components of Ubuntu rely on Nautilus internally. I use Firefox 129.0.1 on Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS.

Is there a way to fix this?

Roshan Sam
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2 Answers2

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Not a terribly helpful answer but none in four days so.... I wonder if you have a cache turned off? I tested here (Ubuntu 22.04) typing 'pickle' while in my Home directory and it almost instantaneously offered options as I typed.

I've noted the first time I do any search (especially after a reboot) the search will take up to several minutes to generate, time seems to be dependent on where I am: home directory or huge subdirectory, more time, a more-specific with fewer files subdirectory much faster. Once this 'cache' is created subsequent search requests are back to almost instantaneous.

Barry Martin
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Once I learnt that Firefox uses GTK file chooser and not Nautilus file chooser, I found a Reddit page which finally exorcised the horrible file chooser from my system.

  1. In the about:config page of Firefox, locate widget.use-xdg-desktop-portal.file-picker key and set it to 1
  2. Install the KDE file chooser by sudo apt install xdg-desktop-portal-kde
  3. Remove the GTK file chooser by sudo apt remove xdg-desktop-portal-gtk
  4. Restart the system

The theme and fonts may look slightly different. I had to manually set Firefox to use dark theme, but the file chooser is still light themed for now. However, for the convenience of having a snappy file navigating experience, it is a price worth paying.

Roshan Sam
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