How to specify the file manager KDE Plasma uses for Recent Files > Open Containing Folder?

[stoke001]

On my Manjaro KDE rig, the Plasma “Recent Files” context menu item “Open Containing Folder” uses Gnome Files instead of Dolphin to open the folder. Can someone recommend how to change this or where to start investigating? I have checked the file association for inode/directory and Dolphin is already first in the list of applications.

[Teo]

/off
I wonder why you have gnome files on kde at all…
/Off

[stoke001]

I’m not sure why it’s installed either, but it got there when I installed an app or I did an update, and it’s normally not a problem so I just left it in case something I installed expected it to be there. I first installed Manjaro KDE on this machine in early 2019 and have just updated it regularly (have never needed to reinstall the OS), but there have been times when I have had to tinker with some apps to keep their functionality and I’ve installed some things from the AUR to that end. BackInTime, Timeshift, Chrome, Czkawka, FreeFileSync, and PeaZip come to mind. My general philosophy is to do backups and basic housekeeping regularly, and to apply updates promptly, but otherwise I don’t have much time to spare so I tend to leave things alone.

[Teo]

Can’t imagine anything having a filemanager as a dependency (except some plug-in for the filemanager itself).

pacman -Sii nautilus

Will tell you.
If you do not use it, just remove it. I know it is a workaround and not a solution, just saying.

[BG405]

It would be interesting to see the output of the following:

pamac search gnome | grep -i installed

For example, I have these on my Plasma system:

vlc-plugin-libsecret  3.0.22-4 [Installed]                                 extra
libsoup  2.74.3-4 [Installed]                                              extra
authenticator  4.6.2-2 [Installed]                                         extra
libgnomekbd  1:3.28.1-2 [Installed]                                        extra
gnome-video-effects  1:0.6.0-2 [Installed]                                 extra
gnome-themes-extra  1:3.28-1 [Installed]                                   extra
gnome-desktop-common  1:44.5-1 [Installed]                                 extra
gnome-desktop  1:44.5-1 [Installed]                                        extra

[scotty65]

It looks to have been a known, unresolved issue since 2018:

397953 – KIO::highlightInFileManager does not respect default file manager...

Some suggested solutions:

Until the issue is fixed, you can work around it in any of the following ways:

Uninstall file managers that aren’t your preferred default file manager.
Run dolphin --daemon. Some distros like Fedora do this automatically to work around the bug.

Source: Default applications no longer being respected - #2 by ngraham - Help - KDE Discuss

or

the problem can be worked around temporarily (for the currently running desktop session) by issuing the following command right after logging in:

systemctl --user start plasma-dolphin.service

If plasma-dolphin.service is started this way it properly claims the FileManager1 DBus interface.

Source: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=397953#c29

or

Copy the system’s dolphin.FileManager1 dbus service across to your user directory so that it will override the system’s freedesktop.FileManager1 dbus service:

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/dbus-1/services/

cp /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.kde.dolphin.FileManager1.service ~/.local/share/dbus-1/services/org.freedesktop.FileManager1.service

(don’t forget to remove the local file when the issue is fixed)
Source: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=397953#c3

or

Compile from source the following KDED module:

GitHub - martenjj/filemanager-kded: Plasma KDED module to use the user's preferred...

Source: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=397953#c30

[stoke001]

Thank you for this comprehensive list of workarounds. I will experiment first chance I get and report how I fared.

[Aragorn]

Check whether you have xdg-desktop-portal-gnome installed, and if so, remove it.

[Teo]

This just occurred to me as i browsed the dependencies of Nautilus earlier, but forgot to write it. Aragorn
Now you have 5 solutions to test.

[stoke001]

First I want to thank everyone for helpful suggestions and second I want to apologize for not knowing how to format my replies. I haven’t learned markdown or spent much time in the Forum. I am very curious though now because I have three Plasma computers that I thought had identical software installed, but only two of them have nautilus.

My first impulse was to just uninstall nautilus because that seems to be the quickest and easiest solution. But then I saw Nautilus is a dependency on the first machine I’ve checked. (I still have to check the other machine that has Nautilus installed but I thought it might help me figure out what package is responsible.)

So

pacman -Qi nautilus | awk '/(^Name)|(^Required By)|(^Optional For)/'

returns

Name            : nautilus
Required By     : xdg-desktop-portal-gnome
Optional For    : None

@Aragorn
Nautilus was required by xdg-desktop-portal-gnome, but xdg-desktop-portal-gnome was optional for xdg-desktop-portal, so I ran

sudo pacman -R xdg-desktop-portal-gnome

to uninstall xdg-desktop-portal-gnome.

Then I ran

sudo pacman -R nautilus

to uninstall nautilus and that solved the problem.

Mod edit: Consecutive posts merged, and formatting added - you will be able to see the changes from the edit, which may be helpful.