*** If you're not sure this is actually a bug, instead post about it at https://discuss.kde.org If you're reporting a crash, attach a backtrace with debug symbols; see https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Debugging/How_to_create_useful_crash_reports Please remove this comment after reading and before submitting - thanks! *** SUMMARY Just switched back to KDE recently. Organized my Places in the sidebar alphabetically (except for Trash at the bottom), but frequently when I try to use "Downloads" it's missing, because Dolphin has arbitrarily decided to move it to the bottom of the Places list after Trash. Items in the Places list should remain where the user put them when organizing the list. STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Organize the Places list in the Dolphin sidebar alphabetically. 2. Use Dolphin and the "Downloads" Places item frequently 3. Eventually Dolphin will move the "Downloads" item to the bottom of the Places list. 4. Move the Downloads folder back into its place in the alphabetically sorted Places list. 5. Repeat steps 2-4 endlessly and scream at computer. OBSERVED RESULT Dolphin doesn't retain the Places folder order that the user set up. It seems insistent that the "Downloads" folder in particular be at the bottom of the Places list. I've not seen it move any other folders around. Happens at least once every day or two, sometimes more frequently. EXPECTED RESULT Dolphin allows user to reorder Places list and preserves this user-defined order. SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Windows: macOS: (available in the Info Center app, or by running `kinfo` in a terminal window) Linux/KDE Plasma: KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.3 KDE Frameworks Version: 6.12.0 Qt Version: 6.8.2 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION Kernel Version: 6.13.7-zen1-1-zen (64-bit) Graphics Platform: Wayland
Hi - just to check, can you please let us know what Linux distribution you are using, and if this issue is still observed with Dolphin 25.04.0? Thanks!
(In reply to John Kizer from comment #1) > Hi - just to check, can you please let us know what Linux distribution you > are using, and if this issue is still observed with Dolphin 25.04.0? > > Thanks! I'm running vanilla Arch Linux, so rolling release. And in switching back to KDE, I lost my custom Waybar widget for displaying the number of pending Arch Repository/AUR updates I have. Apparently my old age is catching up with me (I'm 70) - without that widget I completely forgot about doing Arch updates and had over 1100 pending, including Dolphin 25.04.0. Have it updated now and will report back whether I still see this issue. Thank you for the great file manager!
Haha - well I've definitely had some big updates to run on rolling release distros myself, and I'm 40 - I think it's just one of those things that happens with a lot of competing adult responsibilities! If it still happens with 25.04.0, one thought that came to mind - is your Downloads folder on a regular, fixed volume like your other user directories, or is it possibly mounted on something like an external drive or network share that could lose its connection somehow? I just wonder if somehow an intermittent "existence" of that folder might cause it to quickly disappear and then reappear, but lose its sorting order? And I'm not a developer myself (doing bug triage work), but I know that the Dolphin contributors appreciate it!
Okay, I got everything updated and set up a system to remind me to upgrade packages. It took a few days with the latest Dolphin version, but I am still seeing this issue. All my user folders are on a 4TB btrfs volume that spans two 2TB NVMe drives with redundant metadata, so definitely not a removable drive. The behavior makes me wonder why the Downloads folder is the only folder that's affected by this. And why does Dolphin decide it belongs at the end of the list? Maybe it thinks the folder is being re-added to Places for some reason?
That is strange - just in case it's helpful, could you share what your Downloads folder looks like in the ~/.local/share/user-places.xbel file? For example, mine is below: <bookmark href="file:///home/johnkizer/Downloads"> <title>Downloads</title> <info> <metadata owner="http://freedesktop.org"> <bookmark:icon name="folder-downloads"/> </metadata> <metadata owner="http://www.kde.org"> <ID>1720360954/3</ID> <isSystemItem>true</isSystemItem> </metadata> </info> </bookmark>
Here's the Downloads reference from my user-places.xbel file - looks similar to yours to me. Also see files with the same name with the .bak and .tbcache added. From the mod and creation dates, it looks like all were recreated when I moved the Downloads folder back into place after it got moved to the end. Normally I don't mess with the Places section at all except to click the folders to open them in Dolphin. <bookmark href="file:///home/eos/Downloads"> <title>Downloads</title> <info> <metadata owner="http://freedesktop.org"> <bookmark:icon name="folder-downloads"/> </metadata> <metadata owner="http://www.kde.org"> <ID>1741576138/3</ID> <isSystemItem>true</isSystemItem> </metadata> </info> </bookmark> In the .bak version of this file, the Downloads section is at the extreme end of the file, after all the separators and other sections. I'm trying replacing the content this file with the sorted version, just on the off chance the .bak file getting restored is what's changing the sort order.
So the the .bak file was not the source of the problem - it happened again after just a few hours. I decided to disable the Recently Used section in the Dolphin sidebar, and after confirming the action, the Recently Used separator and folders disappeared as expected, but my Home folder, which was the first Places item, had been moved to the end of the xbel file, just like it's been doing with Downloads. Does Dolphin actually maintain the user-places.xbel file or is this done by a another KDE process? Just curious - still wondering why it feels the need to relocate items in the Places list. Changing the visibility of sections in Dolphin seems to trigger the behavior, for whatever reason.
The "Places" are managed by KIO under KDE Frameworks - which is a great question to confirm, does the same reordering occur in the File Open and File Save dialogs?
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(In reply to John Kizer from comment #8) > The "Places" are managed by KIO under KDE Frameworks - which is a great > question to confirm, does the same reordering occur in the File Open and > File Save dialogs? Don't really use the "Places" in Open/Save Dialog as much, but after watching them awhile they seem to behave completely differently and don't exhibit the issue I see in Dolphin's Places. Item I add to Dolphin's Places don't appear in the Open/Save bookmarks and vice versa (Dolphin has "Add to Places" in contextual menu; Open/Save has "Add to Bookmarks"). In the Open/Save dialog, items I bookmark appear in a separate section under the standard OS user folders (Documents, Pictures, etc), but there's no separator, so it looks like one large list. The top section that contains Downloads cannot be reordered; the bottom section allows the user to reorder the folders by dragging. I've not seen any of the these folders change position on their own. So these don't act like they're using the same list as far as I can tell. I couldn't find any Settings for managing Places - Dolphin is the only UI I've found to add and remove directories from the list. Is that correct?
Ah - it *sounds* like the application you're using to access an Open/Save dialog uses the GTK/GNOME dialogs, rather than the desktop environment native dialogs - ones like Firefox and Thunderbird seem to use the GTK ones by default. If you try Open or Save As in an application like Kate, Okular, etc., do you see the same thing? Thanks!
Had an extended stretch where I didn't observe this issue, so didn't get a chance to check Places in a KDE open dialog. I'd been using Sublime Text, which is where I use the Open File dialog the most, but apparently it doesn't use KDE's native one. This time I used Kate instead. Finally I saw Downloads at the bottom of the Places list again, and while navigating to Kate, I saw a second folder from places jump to the bottom of the list. Discovered two things to report: 1) The folders that move to the bottom of the Places list in Dolphin are also moved to the bottom of the list in the Open File dialog for Kate. So it's affecting more than just Dolphin. 2) I found that I can cause the selected folder in Places to jump to the bottom of the list using the following steps. This is with just a single panel (Places, Remote, etc.) on the left and a single file view on the right. Panels are all locked in place. 1. Make sure the left panel containing Places, etc is active and a folder in the Places list is highlighted. 2. Click on a different folder (but not the last one) in the Places list. This selects it, but moves focus to the folder content list on the right. 3. EITHER click in the empty area of the left panel below the Places, Remote, and Devices lists, OR click a file or folder in the right panel, then click TWICE in this unused area of the left panel. On my 4K monitor this empty area is usually larger than the lists themselves. 4. The selected folder has been moved to the bottom of the list on my setup. Not sure if there are other variables at play here, but it is completely reproducible. Makes me wonder if I've been triggering this inadvertently, since I tend to click into inactive areas of windows to deselect things.
Thanks for providing that extra info! I can't reproduce using those steps, unfortunately.
Just checking, does that same behavior occur on your device if you create a new user?
Hmm. Yes, still occurs if I create a new user and open Dolphin in that account. I use a dark theme in case that matters, and also have Klassy installed - the default light Plasma UI really hurts my old eyes. I usually use Details view for everything in Dolphin and turn off all previews, although the behavior still occurs in Icons view for the new account. Not sure what I should be checking, since KDE is such a huge, complex system. Is there anything, besides the Dolphin settings, that might affect the way clicks in the panels are processed? Think I mentioned I had Sway installed before KDE - not sure I've managed to remove all the pieces needed to support it.
Hmm, just on the off-chance that this would affect something, does this behavior change at all if you go to System Settings > Session > Locations and check and/or reset the values there?
Nope, resetting the directories in Session > Locations made no difference in the behavior of the Places list. Folders that I've added that aren't controlled by that setting are also getting moved, so seems like it was a long shot. I think I've pinned down the action that's triggered most of my issues, and it's not in the last set of steps I posted. But now that I know what's happening and can watch for it, this looks like the likely culprit. Btw, I run Krohnkite and tiled windows with no titlebar (I wouldn't use Plasma were it not for this tool - I really dislike stacking window managers), just to clarify why my windows are (almost) always side-by-side if there's two windows open and have no titlebar by which to select the window. with the mouse. 1. Open window for an app (presumably one that accepts dragged files from Dolphin) and a Dolphin window, so there are two windows side-by-side on screen. 2. Click a folder name (not the last one) in Dolphin's Places list to view the content. 3. Switch to the window for the first app (for me Mod Manager 2 running under Wine is common here). 4. Click in the blank area under Places and the other lists to switch back to Dolphin window. Result: On clicking this area, the selected folder in Places is moved to the bottom of the list. I do this a lot, because that blank area is the largest obvious candidate for an inactive window area in which to click (one minor drawback of having no titlebars). But I did try turning of Krohnkite to see if it affected the behavior I'm seeing Dolphin's behavior - it seemed to have no effect at all.