Bug 507330

Summary:	KIO::highlightInFileManager does not work in Flatpak apps
Product:	[Frameworks and Libraries] frameworks-kio	Reporter:	Nate Graham <nate>
Component:	general	Assignee:	KIO Bugs <kio-bugs-null>
Status:	CONFIRMED ---
Severity:	normal	CC:	kde, kde, kdedev, kdelibs-bugs-null, postix
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	6.16.0
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Other
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Nate Graham 2025-07-21 19:26:28 UTC

This is because it calls out to org.freedesktop.FileManager1, which is blacklisted by default in Flatpak.

Instead of whitelisting it in each one of our apps (manual and error-prone) or our SDK (over-broad and controversial), we can change the DBus call from:

org.freedesktop.FileManager1 /org/freedesktop/FileManager1 org.freedesktop.FileManager1 ShowItems

to:

org.freedesktop.portal.Desktop /org/freedesktop/portal/desktop org.freedesktop.portal.OpenURI.OpenDirectory

…but only if we detect we're in a sandbox.

Comment 1 Nate Graham 2025-07-21 19:29:10 UTC

Documentation for this: https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/blob/522236e41043a558a825da4cee70ee31ce607147/data/org.freedesktop.portal.OpenURI.xml#L134

Comment 2 David Edmundson 2025-07-21 21:18:42 UTC

>…but only if we detect we're in a sandbox.

I can't see a reason to do that. It should work with anything.
Simpler code is better code.

Comment 3 Nate Graham 2025-07-21 21:44:52 UTC

I guess it's a trade-off between code complexity vs internal implementation complexity. Always going through the portal means:
- A de facto dependency on xdg-desktop-portal in KIO
- A more complex internal path to opening the file manager, and therefore potentially lower speed and higher vulnerability to the portal functionality being broken

Comment 4 David Redondo 2025-07-22 09:02:54 UTC

OpenDirectory only supports one File and you have to have an open fd to it