Somewhat of a PSA for Qt users:
On Linux, Firefox will now default to the XDG portal file picker if available, rather than the GTK3 one, which is usually better integrated with the user’s desktop environment, and more powerful. https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/149.0/releasenotes/
Edit: I talk about a patched version below, but it was an about:config toggle in more recent times.
Always needed a patched version of Firefox before for that. Presumably most distros will transparently throw that patch out of their Firefox package, so likely don’t have to do anything.
But well, you don’t specifically need a patched version anymore for that, so if that’s a separate package on your distro, you could consider using the normal package again. Although, I believe there’s also still patches floating about for using the KDE mimetype system…
The patch notes is from March 24, 2026, about 4 months ago. So I wouldn’t call it “now”, as the title suggest a new change.
Patched? But it was a mere about:config setting or policy for years.
Oh, I think, you’re right. It was a patch by openSUSE at first, but then they integrated it in about:config.
Just saw this while flicking through the changelog and hadn’t heard of this when it was released. Perhaps too niche to report on for news pages. So, I figured, I’d post here. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My version is KDE patched, the actual browser I use is Librewolf, but I keep the distro package of Googlyfox around for when I need to use a less securely configured browser that allows redirects and captive portals and doesn’t block bot checks that use cross site javascript and WebGL contenta and browswer fingerprinting and…
I’m a “developer edition” user (beta channel) running multiple profiles from multiple system users, and the only change I noticed weeks ago was the file picker not opening at all 😬
Fixed by running firefox with
dbus-launch. So that was +1 for dbus over systemd in the race to make less shit work expectedly, while killing unix/posix in the process.wow sucks if that’s true. why wouldn’t they just fallback to GTK+3 file picker when dbus isn’t working well?
i also kinda have dbus killed on my system, gotta see if i get this issue after my distro gets ESR 153…
I had to do some manual configuration to make the XDG portal filepicker work correctly in Niri, but after that I haven’t had any problems
There is a reason why Linux isn’t POSIX compliance, Unix and POSIX sucks.
UNIX and POSIX is awesome. Any operating system not following these standards suck, such as Windows and DOS.
What’s the reason?
Nah, dbus sucks. And it’s intended replacement, dbus brocker, even more, because it’s a wrapper around systemd calls, doesn’t work with any other service manager.
