Using the xdg-desktop-portal on GNU/Linux?

wxPython Users
1

The GTK3 default file picker is completely inferior to the Windows and MacOS file selector widgets. However, GTK3 on GNU/Linux allows to use the desktop portal (Such as if the KDE portal is installed) to use the libraries provided by KDE to get a significantly better one.

Since I can only upload one image, here is for reference the KDE portal file chooser:

kdepicker
kdepicker1008×736 209 KB

The default GTK3 one has no thumbnails other than a sidepanel for a single image. This makes it incredibly inconvenient to use if many images exist in a directory.

GTK3 and GTK4, there is an API to allow using the native portals if installed and configured.
From the API, for GTK3 is FileChooserNative. Can I hook into PyGObject API since this uses GTK3 on unix like systems? Or should I instead use the python xdg libraries instead?

2

I’m not sure how well mixing wxPython with PyGObject would work. You could try, though.

But some news on this front, upstream recently merged GtkFileChooserNative support, see: Use GtkFileChooserNative for wxFileDialog/wxDirDialog when possible by paulcor · Pull Request #25152 · wxWidgets/wxWidgets · GitHub

I’m not sure whether this could be backported to 3.2, though.

3

I’m very pleased to hear that GtkFileChooserNative was merged, meaning that next official stable release I can compile for debian and use it immediately. :smiley:

It still leaves in the air if Qt6 or GTK4 will be next in line after GTK3, only time will tell.