I want to see hidden files by default in the open dialog, especially in text/code editors. I can right click and select hidden files, but I want this to be the default.
I have tried the following:
gsettings set org.gtk.Settings.FileChooser show-hidden true
gsettings set org.gtk.gtk4.Settings.FileChooser show-hidden true
I have changed this setting in:
~/config/gtk-2.0/gtkfilechooser.ini
None of these changes take effect in code/text editors, gnumeric, etc.
I feel certain the file chooser is the right place as other settings have taken effect, such as startup-mode.
What am I missing? How can I change the hidden files behavior?
No… i doubt that! I know somethings but I don’t know that much. I just try to use the knowledge i do have and it helps me to figure certain things out. I’m not one to write things down so it always makes me have to think but sometimes that’s not helpful.
This is related to the Gnome DE, but it may or may not carry over to others. When using Gnome’s Nautilus file manager, if I had files hidden here, then any open dialog box will not show any hidden files. But if I show hidden files in Nautilus, then any open dialog box will show any hidden files. At least in Gnomes case, this setting appears to be somewhat tied to the file manager as the de facto setting, so perhaps depending on your file manager of choice for i3, it may be something similar, but perhaps it may not be of course too.
EOS i3 has Thunar installed, which I like. I have hidden files set to be shown, and that works fine for displaying in Thunar only. But has no effect elsewhere.
The gsettings I changed are “supposed” to be the solution. But they do nothing.
Since there is supposed to be a way to change the default, I would like to know what it is or why this doesn’t work. Right-clicking or ctrl-h is a tedious work around at best.
None of the settings here have any effect, so this is likely a GTK4 bug (or they’ve moved the settings elsewhere, or have decided to ignore them entirely).
Is it just my imagination, or do a lot off apps using gtk have “irregular” behavior. Meaning that what one reads in gtk documentation, stackoverflow, Arch wiki, etc., report how things are “supposed to be” but in reality are too often “off”?
I thought when I learned about gsettings that I had found Shangri-La! But alas, I found Paris. It looks good, but many things work in a difficult to understand fashion. C’est la vie!
This is my experience in XFCE, too. XFCE uses Thunar and that’s just fine – as a traditionalist, I actually really like Thunar – but it is extraordinarily jarring that the result is a system where every other application appears to use a different dialog for file open/save… and none appear to look just like Thunar, which is what I really want.
I’m guessing that the desktop environment doesn’t actually provide the file-save dialog but that that is based on the expected DE of the app, which is nearly always Gnome and that means that one invariably ends up with that Gnome picker thing… which I personally find to be unusable.
Hidden files aren’t shown by default; the directory path is buttons, not text; backspace does not navigate “up one level” OR “back” and seems to do nothing…
It’s just dire. Worst thing on my XFCE desktop if I’m honest, by a country mile. (Still: better than nag screens to sign in with a Micros~1 account.)
