Desktop folder gets created sometimes and is recognized by pantheon-files

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff]

Desktop folder is still recognized by pantheon-files and get created by applications sometimes. We should ditch it completely and redirect all requests to it to home folder. That's the default fallback for any nonexistent folders, but desktop folder has special handling. Our OS patches remove it, but it seems that's not sufficient.

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff (shnatsel)]

This is weird because "/usr/bin/xdg-user-dir desktop" prints the home folder but pantheon-files treats "~/Desktop" as a desktop folder

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff (shnatsel)]

I've committed the required changes to the OS patch of xdg-user-dirs, it was incompletely cleansed indeed.
I wonder if it will build in the recipe now.

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff (shnatsel)]

And yet this doesn't seem to be sufficient.
Perhaps we should patch xdg-user-dirs-gtk too.

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff (shnatsel)]

Oh my. The folder is present in live session and it's localized even with the latest patches...

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff (shnatsel)]

XDG_DESKTOP_DIR is still present in ~/.config/user-dirs, so I guess my latest patch has actually regressed things.

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff (shnatsel)]

Ah, that was caused by the workaround for bug 1089615 suggested by Launchpad devs causing the patches to not be applied at all. Should be fixed now.

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff (shnatsel)]

That's still not sufficient. I've patched xdg-user-dirs-gtk too, let's see if that helps.

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff (shnatsel)]

STILL not sufficient. Man, in how many places did they manage to stick this special handling code?!

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff (shnatsel)]

I'm afraid I'm out of ideas. Somebody else should have a look at this.

[bwat47 (bwat47)]

If this can't be done we should at least get the desktop icon added back to the elementary theme. When the desktop folder shows up it has a super ugly gnome icon. It wouldn't be a big deal IMO if it at least used a normal elementary folder icon...

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff (shnatsel)]

Screenshot of the issue: https://bugs.launchpad.net/elementaryos/+bug/1092658/+attachment/3464901/+files/Screenshot%20from%202012-12-20%2011%3A08%3A19.png

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff (shnatsel)]

According to a duplicate bug 1092658, the folder gets created on invoking the "open file" dialog from a web browser.

[Clearflower (flowc111)]

I caught it right in the action. Apperently, the "open file" dialog in firefox defaults to a directory in the file manager called /home/user-name/desktop. What happens is this directory doesn't exist inside files in the first place, so it makes a folder automatically - the "desktop" folder. Once you upload a file to a web dialog, it then stays in the directory if which the file was uploaded from, so obviously it won't happen in the same dialog again. I hope the image and the info helps.

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff (shnatsel)]

Setting "org.gnome.nautilus.preferences desktop-is-home-dir" in dconf to true seems to fix this. Pushed that to OS defaults.

Existing users will have to manually reset that key or create a new user account to get the fix. I'll reopen the bug if the problem persists.

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff (shnatsel)]

Nah, still happens here X(

[Cody Garver (codygarver)]

Well, at least the latest fix got rid of an intrusive warning whenever you launch Nautilus.

[Cody Garver (codygarver)]

The only thing I've seen make a Desktop folder lately is Steam.

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff (shnatsel)]

Could you report a bug about that at https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues ?

[Cody Garver (codygarver)]

Haven't seen one of these for a while, has anyone else?

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff (shnatsel)]

Firefox creates it on opening "Open File" dialog.

Also it's not like we can patch every single piece of software this cycle. We need to make apps from recognize home folder as desktop folder instead of sticking to "~/Desktop".

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff (shnatsel)]

After applying the following one-line patch to Glib I can no longer reproduce this bug.

[Cody Garver (codygarver)]

Haven't experienced this on Trusty/Isis

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff (shnatsel)]

Interestingly enough, it was somehow fixed in Luna... at least Pantheon Files no longer seems to consider Desktop folder a special one. No idea why.

[Sascha Heuterer (theanachron)]

Got this folder created again on Freya installation, using programs like NetBeans IDE which add shortcuts to the Desktop.

[Abhinav (agauniyal)]

I haven't installed Netbeans or any other IDE but it does gets created on Freya and on deleting returns back every time I login again.

[Timo Reimerdes (timorei)]

Seeing this happening on every login on current freya beta install.

[Alex Viscreanu (alexviscreanu)]

Bug stills on Freya Stable release.

[Coeur Noir (coeur-noir)]

Well, I've seen the same behavior on my fresh Freya (0.3) after installing Firefox.

[Timo Reimerdes (timorei)]

Workaround for firefox creating the Desktop folder over and over again:

~$ scratch-text-editor .config/user-dirs.dirs

make sure there is a line:
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="/home/<yourusername>/"

Not "$HOME" - for some reason some applications, firefox being one of them, seem to have a problem recognizing that var. In fact - just to make certain that all other directories are found as well, you can just replace all ocurances of $HOME/ with /home/<yourusername>/

Obiously fill in the name of your user for <yourusername>.

From now on, firefox is not creating the Desktop folder anymore. (I bet this is related to Telegram creating the darn fontconfig folder in Home... *sigh*)

[Gabriel_P (gabp)]

I'm getting this issue consistently with Zotero (https://www.zotero.org/) in Freya.

The standalone version creates a 'Desktop' folder every time the app opens.

Tried the patch above by Timo R but it didn't work.

[Timo Reimerdes (timorei)]

I just found my own answer and it works.

replaced all $HOME/ with /home/timo/

added the missing XDG_DESKTOP_DIR=/home/timo/

Firefor did not create the folder. Just make sure you have the line for the desktop present (it wasn't there at all after super-clean-install). Obviously replace "timo" with your own username.

[Gabriel_P (gabp)]

Just noticed that Google Chrome will store in this desktop folder the "apps" created with the new feature described here:

https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/3060053

see 'Add a website as an app'.

Not sure how this will behave when no 'Desktop' folder is available.

[Seth (sysfu)]

Confirm that XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="/home/<yourusername>/" trick works with Thunderbird 38.8.0

[Jung-Kyu Park (bagjunggyu)]

This workaround doesn't work for non-English like Korean
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="/home/<yourusername>/"

ex)
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="/home/bagjunggyu/사진"

[Jung-Kyu Park (bagjunggyu)]

My fault it worked for me in Korean, I fully misunderstood it.

[Jung-Kyu Park (bagjunggyu)]

Actually, This symptom happens not noly "Desktop" folder but also to "Downloads" when downloading files via Firefox.
In Korean , we have two folders for download files one for standard download folder by locale "다운로드", and "Downloads" created by Firefox.
Sometimes files are downloaded to the "Downloads" folder not to standard folder "다운로드"

That workaround worked for this case too,
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="/home/bagjunggyu/다운로드"

[melmolot1177 (melmolot1177-deactivatedaccount)]

Still present on Loki w/ Firefox. Can anyone else please confirm?

[Timo Reimerdes (timorei)]

Can confirm. But it's not just loki, any distribution not using a designated desktop folder is behaving this way.

But for me the .config/user-dirs.dirs workaround fixes it reliably:

XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/"