XDG Desktop Portal

From the Flatpak documentation:

Portals are the framework for securely accessing resources from outside an application sandbox. They provide a range of common features to applications, including: Determining network status, opening a file with a file chooser, opening URIs, taking screenshots and screencasts [...]

Portals were designed for use with applications sandboxed through Flatpak, but any application can use portals to provide uniform access to features independent of desktops and toolkits. This is commonly used, for example, to allow screen sharing on Wayland via PipeWire, or to use file open and save dialogs on Firefox that use the same toolkit as your current desktop environment.

Installation

Install xdg-desktop-portal and one or more backends. The package includes a systemd/User service that will be automatically started via D-Bus.

Backends

When an application makes a request through a portal, it is handled by xdg-desktop-portal, which then forwards it to a backend implementation. This allows a clean way to provide suitable user interfaces that fit into different desktop environments, and access environment-specific APIs for requests like showing notifications or recording the screen. Multiple backends can be installed: for example, a Sway user may use xdg-desktop-portal-wlr for screen sharing support and xdg-desktop-portal-gtk as a fallback for all other interfaces that xdg-desktop-portal-wlr does not implement.

Portal backend definitions are located in /usr/share/xdg-desktop-portal/portals/*.portal. Each portal backend file contains a list of interfaces that it can handle, and the desktop environments that it can be used in.

List of backends and interfaces

The following table lists all backends available and their support for certain common interfaces.

Backend	File chooser	Screenshot and screen cast
xdg-desktop-portal-dde	Yes	Yes, on Deepin Desktop Environment
xdg-desktop-portal-gnome	Yes	Yes, on GNOME
xdg-desktop-portal-gtk	Yes	No
xdg-desktop-portal-kde	Yes	Yes, on KDE
xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland¹	No	Yes, on wlroots
xdg-desktop-portal-lxqt	Yes	No
xdg-desktop-portal-wlr	No	Yes, on wlroots
xdg-desktop-portal-xapp	No	Yes, on Cinnamon
xdg-desktop-portal-liri-git^AUR	Yes	Yes, on Liri
xdg-desktop-portal-shana^AUR	Yes²	No
xdg-desktop-portal-td^AUR	Yes	No
xdg-desktop-portal-termfilechooser-git^AUR	Yes³	No

works with all wlroots-based compositors, but provides extra functionality when used with Hyprland such as sharing individual windows.
redirects requests to GNOME/GTK/KDE/LXQt backends
allows using a terminal file manager as a file chooser

Configuration

When a request is made, xdg-desktop-portal will use the /usr/share/xdg-desktop-portal/DE-portals.conf file, where DE is based on the XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP environment variable. These files are provided by the desktop environments themselves and determine which backends should be used when a specific environment is running.

If you want to override the desktop environment defaults, or your desktop environment does not provide a default configuration, you may create a portal configuration file at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/xdg-desktop-portal/portals.conf to determine which backends you want to use, either generally or for each individual interface. If you use multiple desktop environments, you may also create multiple $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/xdg-desktop-portal/DE-portals.conf files for each environment.

For example, if your desktop environment does not have a portal backend, and you want to use xdg-desktop-portal-gtk as a generic fallback but also use the LXQt file picker through xdg-desktop-portal-lxqt, you can use the following configuration:

~/.config/xdg-desktop-portal/portals.conf

[preferred]
default=gtk
org.freedesktop.impl.portal.FileChooser=lxqt

See portals.conf(5) for more information.

Tip:

This article or section is out of date.

Reason: This is obsolete - config files are already explained above. (Discuss in Talk:XDG Desktop Portal)

To use the gtk portal as a fallback, it may be necessary to create the configuration file DE-portals.conf or portals.conf. See this forum discussion.

Force desktop environment

In some cases, such as when you have a standalone window manager, you might want to make xdg-desktop-portal to think you are using a specific desktop environment. This can be achieved by setting the XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP environment variable for the xdg-desktop-portal.service user unit using a drop-in snippet. For example, to use the backend associated with KDE:

~/.config/systemd/user/xdg-desktop-portal.service.d/override.conf

[Service]
Environment="XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=KDE"

If you create the file manually instead of using systemctl, do a daemon-reload.

Troubleshooting

xdg-desktop-portal-wlr does not start automatically on sway

For xdg-desktop-portal-wlr to work, the XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP and WAYLAND_DISPLAY environment variables have to be set in the systemd user session. XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP has to be set to the name of your compositor, e.g. XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=sway. WAYLAND_DISPLAY is set automatically by the compositor.

Check whether these variables are set with systemctl --user show-environment. If they are not set, import these environment variables into the systemd user session and dbus by running the following commands after launching the compositor (e.g., include them in the compositor's configuration file).

$ systemctl --user import-environment WAYLAND_DISPLAY XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP
$ dbus-update-activation-environment --systemd WAYLAND_DISPLAY XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=compositor_name

Tip: Sway provides a drop-in file which does this automatically, see Sway#Configuration.

See [1] and [2] for more details.

Using multiple monitors with xdg-desktop-portal-wlr

xdg-desktop-portal-wlr requires an external chooser to select the shared monitor. By default, it looks for slurp, wofi and bemenu in this order. When using slurp, after a request for screen sharing you will be presented with a crosshair cursor and you will need to click the screen you want to share. When using wofi or bemenu, you will be presented with a menu of available displays to share. If no choosers are available, xdg-desktop-portal-wlr will fallback to the first monitor found. For more information, see xdg-desktop-portal-wlr(5) § SCREENCAST OPTIONS.