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In my work I must save hundreds of images using Firefox each day. I require the use of the keyboard for this. The usual task is to right-click an image in a web page, select "v" for "Save Image As..." and then to press the "Enter" key to select the "Save" button in the file-save dialog.

I recently switched to Ubuntu 22.04 and I note that things have changed such that I am currently being forced to manually click on the "Save" button of the save-file dialog. The "Enter" key doesn't work. How can I get this functionality back? It breaks my work process.

muru
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BlandCorporation
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4 Answers4

6

You are victim of a bug - that still is not fixed after several years - in xdg-desktop-portal, tools that provide interfaces between containerized applications and your system, in this case, to the native file dialogs. First time around, the dialog has keyboard focus, but subsequent times in a session, the dialog does not get keyboard focus when opened.

It indeed breaks a keyboard based workflow, and is a very obvious usability issue. The issue is due to Firefox being installed as a Snap, but the issue affects also the other containerized formats Flatpak and Appimage.

Current workaround: remove Firefox snap version and install the .deb version from Mozilla instead (instructions here).

vanadium
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  • Official consolidated Ubuntu bug found here https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/+bug/1949340 – tyleha Jan 05 '23 at 18:36
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There is a workaround documented in the official consolidated Ubuntu bug.

Open about:config and set widget.use-xdg-desktop-portal.file-picker to 0.

tyleha
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Paddy Landau from https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2478830&page=2&p=14112414#post14112414 posted a workaround which works for me in Ubuntu 22.04. Gnome 42.5:

Workaround requires Devilspie 2. Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, it doesn't work in Wayland, but it works in X.Org.

  1. Install Devilspie 2 from the standard repositories or, if you want the latest version, which has several improvements, compile from source direct from the Devilspie 2 Github.

  2. Add devilspie2 to your autostart programs.

  3. Create the file ~/.config/devilspie2/devilspie2.lua

In this file, add the following lines:

if ( get_application_name() == 'xdg-desktop-portal-gnome' and get_window_type() == 'WINDOW_TYPE_DIALOG' )
then
    focus_window();
end
  1. Log out and in again to start Devilspie 2.
DaFu
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On my machine, a few minutes ago, the sudo snap install snapd version was more recent (v2.58.3) than the apt installed version of snapd (v2.58). The former fixed the problem.

Alex Robinson
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