Recently, I had noticed that when I add an attachment (e.g. to email, via a web browser), GNOME's GTK file picker was only providing a list from recently opened items. Previously, it provided a PATH selection, which was a lot more useful for me. When the file picker opens, normally, there is a left-hand sidebar containing items like "Home", "Documents", "Downloads", etc. A normal workaround if this isn't available is to select Ctrl+L to open a location-based entry box, but this wasn't available either. The following question arises: How do I revert to the previous PATH-based menu? What changed, and why?

The first step to check the version of the operating system, desktop environment, and version of GNOME:


$ cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS"
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION_ID="22.04"
VERSION="22.04.5 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish)"
$ echo $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP
ubuntu:GNOME
$ gnome-shell --version
GNOME Shell 42.9


There are reasons why I'm using a 2022 LTS version of Ubuntu, but that's for another post; what's important is that this version of Ubuntu and the version of GNOME provided a clue toward what happened.

The next step was to search in the gsettings for the file picker's "recent" choice, and that confirmed what was being experienced:


$ gsettings list-recursively | grep recent
...
org.gtk.gtk4.Settings.FileChooser startup-mode 'recent'


GNOME 42 uses a mix of GTK3, and GTK4 plus xdg-desktop-portal, and many applications now use the GTK4 file chooser, which starts in the "Recent" view. Many developers (including GNOME developers) are increasingly adopting the "Recent" view and document-centric workflows over traditional filesystem navigation. This a terrible idea, albeit very common in a brain-dead Sharepoint-style mentality where the implicit knowledge gained by showing the filesystem and PATH is removed from the user. It will make users increasingly ignorant of computer systems, and it will make it harder for those who want to use the system to their advantage. The only people it benefits are the wilfully ignorant. Remember: Stupid is wrong and must be defeated.

The first suspect was that a GTK4 package or Flatpak update changed the setting. Another test resulted in some interesting answers, which added to this suspicion:


$ gsettings get org.gtk.gtk4.Settings.FileChooser startup-mode
'cwd'
$ gsettings range org.gtk.gtk4.Settings.FileChooser startup-mode
enum
'recent'
'cwd'
$ gsettings describe org.gtk.gtk4.Settings.FileChooser startup-mode
Either "recent" or "cwd"; controls whether the file chooser starts up showing the list of recently-used files, or the contents of the current working directory.


To fix this bug, change gsettings to 'current working directory' and verify:


$ gsettings set org.gtk.gtk4.Settings.FileChooser startup-mode 'cwd'
$ gsettings get org.gtk.gtk4.Settings.FileChooser startup-mode
'cwd'


Whilst that's fixed the problem, the question still remains of what caused it in the first place?