Whonix Workstation 18 - Tor Browser does not recognize new File Manager (PcManFM not set to default?)

[themailman]

In Tor browser, when you download a file you see a folder icon next to the download. In previous versions of Whonix, clicking this folder opened the file manager (Thunar.)

As of W18 workstation, clicking that folder does nothing.

Hypothesis is that the default file manager has not been updated to PCManFM-Qt.

A temporary workaround is to go to the pull-down menu, select the dispVM, and open its file manager (or a terminal) manually, then navigate to .tb/tor-browser/Browser/Downloads.

[arraybolt3]

Known issue, several fixes have been discussed/attempted but so far a suitable one hasn’t been found. See:

Is catfish the new default in the Qubes Domain open file manager quick widget for whonix?

The issue also occurs in whonix-workstation-18 on Qubes OS 4.3. When I set the default handler for inode/directory to pcmanfm-qt using this command: xdg-mime default /usr/share/applications/pcmanfm-qt.desktop inode/directory It only works if an instance of pcmanfm-qt is already running. In that case, it perfectly opens the folder clicked from a browser or app and selects the relevant file. [instance_open] However, if no instance is running, it falls back to opening Catfish. If I change th…

And the conversation below that. In particular, the remaining solutions we’re discussing are listed here:

Is catfish the new default in the Qubes Domain open file manager quick widget for whonix?

Posting this here to document what we’ve investigated for fixing this so far, why it didn’t work, and what other options we have. The first, obvious option, is to just run pcmanfm-qt --daemon-mode at startup so that the file manager just works. This is unfortunately problematic, because sometimes the VMs Whonix-Workstation runs under are very RAM-constrained, and the additional memory PCManFM-Qt takes up is unacceptable. The second option is to make PCManFM-Qt a D-Bus activated service. This a…