Implement a better file chooser / picker via xdg-desktop-portal-xapp

[billyswong]

Background:
https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/149.0/releasenotes/

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.

The GTK3 file picker has been complained many many times by many people. Often we just conclude it is out of scope of What Linux Mint can do. But it might not be totally true.

More and more applications are shifting away from invoking the GTK file dialog directly. They send their request to XDG desktop portal and let it take care instead. This lead to an opportunity. Linux Mint may be able to intercept the request, and provide a better file picker dialog!

[mtwebster]

Not sure I agree with the release notes statement - it'll usually still be gtk-based, but gtk4 instead (which isn't really a good thing feature-wise).

This has been something I want to look at for some time - the obvious choice for us would be to have something that looks and feels like nemo, but it's not simple to do.

We could do a Gtk3 dialog with a much better-populated sidebar, which to me is the biggest problem with the default one.

[AttilaLL]

I think the biggest problem is it's crappy picture/video preview/thumbnailing. It would be great to have big thumbnailed icons in it.
Also when you implement it would be great to keep support for network locations (connections from samba, ssh, etc..)

[JoeJoeTV]

One of the biggest problems I have with the GTK file dialog is that you can't enter a path, you have to manually navigate somewhere where you already know the exact path.
In nemo, you can click on the path bar and enter a path, but you can't in the GTK file chooser.
So that is one improvement I would really like.
Not sure if the GTK4 one has this as I currenty don't have a program to test this with, but on my Mint machine when I open a dialog with the XDG-desktop-portal it does not have this feature at least.

[JosephMcc]

One of the biggest problems I have with the GTK file dialog is that you can't enter a path, you have to manually navigate somewhere where you already know the exact path. In nemo, you can click on the path bar and enter a path, but you can't in the GTK file chooser. So that is one improvement I would really like. Not sure if the GTK4 one has this as I currenty don't have a program to test this with, but on my Mint machine when I open a dialog with the XDG-desktop-portal it does not have this feature at least.

Ctrl + L. Type in path.

[JoeJoeTV]

Ctrl + L. Type in path.

Oh wow, thanks!

I would still think that having it work like in Nemo would be much better.
As you could see with myself, this feature is not really discoverable and many people probably don't know it exists (correct me if I'm wrong).
It would be more intuitive if the "OS default" file picker work more closely like how the the default file manager (Nemo) works.

[billyswong]

Ctrl + L. Type in path.

The Ctrl+L text field in the GTK3 filepicker doesn't keep the existing path in display.

[billyswong]

About "the biggest problem", my opinion is in its broken UI on search/find. There is a search toggle button in GTK3 filepicker, but it is hidden when the computer configured to use traditional window titlebar, which is the case of Linux Mint. If one trigger it accidentally, it become mysterious how to get out of the search.