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I'm using OpenBox window manager without any desktop environment.
xdg-open behaves strangely. It opens everything with firefox.
$ xdg-settings --list
Known properties:
default-web-browser Default web browser
I'm looking for a simple program; something like reading every *.desktop file in /usr/share/applications/ folder and automatically setting xdg settings.
Why not to use utilities from xdg itself?
To make Thunar the default file-browser, i.e. the default application for opening folders.
$ xdg-mime default Thunar.desktop inode/directory
to use xpdf as the default PDF viewer:
$ xdg-mime default xpdf.desktop application/pdf
This should create an entry
[Default Applications]
application/pdf=xpdf.desktop
in your local MIME database ~/.config/mimeapps.list.
Your PDF files should be opened with xpdf now.
defaults.list so it can simply be edited by hand if need be.
xdg-mime did not modify defaults.list, but editing it manually (thanks to hints in this answer) did the trick.
Jun 28, 2016 at 12:45
defaults.list is now called mimeapps.list. See the Arch Wiki for a list of valid locations for mimeapps.list.
Sep 24, 2017 at 20:51
xdg-mime query filetype pathTofileYourInterestedIn
You can install and use perl-file-mimeinfo in the extra repository to manage mimetypes.
Example to open all .pdf files in apvlv:
/usr/bin/vendor_perl/mimeopen -d $file.pdfor on other Linux distributions where mimeopen is NOT in /usr/bin/vendor_perl/ but is in one of the $PATH directories :
mimeopen -d $file.pdf
and then, at the prompt, enter the application: apvlv.
xdg-open left unconfigured and applications using xdg-open won't open files right.
-d switch sets the default. So if you use it to open fileA.pdf - you should then be able to open fileB.pdf with your preferred application.
Apr 15, 2012 at 9:34
mimeopen -d a.pdf sets default for *.pdf, but it sets default for itself - mimeopen b.pdf works. But xdg-open configuration left unchanged and it still opens everything with firefox :/
mimeopen, xdg-open behaves as expected--in the case of .pdfs, it opens them with apvlv.
Apr 20, 2012 at 7:50
sudo xdg-mime default pluma.desktop text/plain gives touch: cannot touch "/home/user/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list": No such file or directory /usr/bin/xdg-mime: 807: /usr/bin/xdg-mime: cannot create /home/user/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list.new: Directory nonexistent; /usr/bin/vendor_perl/mimeopen -d $file.txt gives bash: /usr/bin/vendor_perl/mimeopen: No such file or directory.
Feb 21, 2017 at 18:50
You could use something like this to generate the appropriate xdg-mime commands for each of your .desktop files and the mimetypes they contain, then execute the ones you like. Note /usr/share/applications might have subdirectories.
find /usr/share/applications ~/.local/share/applications -iname '*.desktop' -print0 | while IFS= read -r -d $'\0' d; do
for m in $(grep MimeType "$d" | cut -d= -f2 | tr ";" " "); do
echo xdg-mime default "'$d'" "'$m'"
done
done
On Debian you could use the command, as root
update-mime-database /usr/share/mime
having the shared-mime-info package installed.
For those like me that did not know how to get the proper mimetype to use with xdg-mime:
1- Initial situation:
$ xdg-open . opens vscodium (who hardcoded this stupid file association?) :[
2- Problem: what is the mime type of "."?
$ mimetype .
.: inode/directory
3- Solution:
$ xdg-mime default thunar.desktop inode/directory
NOTE: Following line doesnot work but no error is reported :{
$ xdg-mime default Thunar.desktop inode/directory
Adding to what everyone said, Make sure you have no overlapping applications being used.
For example let us assume you want to change the default magnet link to use qbittorrent so you type
xdg-mime default org.qbittorrent.qBittorrent.desktop x-scheme-handler/magnet
But when you type this and check your current default magnet
xdg-mime query default x-scheme-handler/magnet
It shows some other application for example popcorntime.desktop which isn't what you want.
So to fix this:
Using a File manager, go to /usr/share/applications and find popcorntime.desktop
Right click it and then click properties.
Go to the Applications tab.
In the Supported file types: area, remove the Mimetype application/x-bittorrent
Then go ahead and click ok
Notice how when you open properties again and check, you find that nothing has changed and it went back to how it was.
But it actually got deleted for a second and got reconfigured, which is why now the command
xdg-mime default org.qbittorrent.qBittorrent.desktop x-scheme-handler/magnet
which was already set in mimeapps.list will get applied.
xdg-mime default command isn't succeeding, or something is overwriting the mime database - maybe a nightly cron job? Editing distribution files in /usr/share/applications may solve the problem short term, but is a hack.
Jun 9, 2020 at 4:58
xdg-mime(part ofxdg-utils) is the best answer for working with (querying, configuring)xdg-open. See also unix.stackexchange.com/questions/8793/…xdg-openopening everything in Firefox, simply deleting~/.config/mimeapps.listand restarting fxed it for me (in Ubuntu 20.04).