Weird download location

[JCanoe123]

Hi there. I am having an issue that is becoming increasingly frustrating. I go to download something on my external drive and then I go to save another file and it always defaults to an odd location (see screenshot). I then am forced to navigate back to it. Any help would be appreciated. I am a beginner at this - using updated Brave browser and an updated version of Linux. Thank you!

[spamegg]

Welcome to the Forum.

This is how things work with many Flatpak apps, due to their permissions / sandboxing.
They prefer to use folders inside the /run/user/1000/ directory with specific permissions.
This directory is controlled by the environment variable XDG_RUNTIME_DIR.
https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/sand ... sions.html
So you can simply start making a habit of using that directory, you can bookmark it in your file manager for easy access.

If you want to solve the issue you can change this directory (NOT RECOMMENDED, since it's messing with Flatpak's sandboxing permission design).
Add this to your ~/.profile file:

Code: Select all

export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/home/$USER/Downloads

I'm not sure if this will actually solve the issue, it's just a guess.
My recommendation is to keep using the defaults.
I'm not a Flatpak user so I cannot comment too much.

[JCanoe123]

Thank you so so much. That is disappointing to hear, as I am trying to save the files on an external drive but it defaults to my desktop. I appreciate greatly your response.
If I install Brave like this - https://brave.com/linux/#release-channel-installation

would that fix it, vs. downloading it from the Mint software manager?

[spamegg]

Yes, that is not Flatpak, so that should work normally.

By the way, on second thought just disregard my suggestion about changing XDG_RUNTIME_DIR that would probably mess up Flatpak's functioning.