Why is my desktop the same as home folder?

Question

My desktop (not the /home/user/Desktop folder) shows the contents of my /home/user folder. I don't know how I have done it and can I have some help on undoing it? The /home/user/Desktop folder just contains my desktop files which do not appear on my desktop.

Is your ~/Desktop folder located on another partition? – muru Sep 12 '14 at 11:19 — muru, Sep 12 '14 at 11:19
~/Desktop is on the same partition. – The Okay Man Sep 12 '14 at 11:20 — The Okay Man, Sep 12 '14 at 11:20
Also visit :http://askubuntu.com/q/66322/256099 – Pandya Sep 12 '14 at 14:24 — Pandya, Sep 12 '14 at 14:24

g_p · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-17T15:29:25.793

59

You can change you desktop folder i.e the folder you want to use as your Desktop.

Open the ~/.config folder. (Press Ctrl+h to show hidden folders.)
Open the user-dirs.dirs file in gedit.

enter image description here

Change XDG_DESKTOP_DIR to the folder you want to show as your Desktop folder. In your case it is XDG_DESKTOP_DIR=$HOME/Desktop
Now restart nautilus using nautilus -q or killall nautilus and again opening it from Dash.

edited Sep 17 '14 at 15:29

answered Sep 12 '14 at 11:23

g_p

18,504

This answer is still up to date on Trusty 14.04.4. Thanks. +1 – Cbhihe Mar 21 '16 at 17:36
1

still works in 16.04 – Anwar Jul 03 '16 at 18:02
1

still works in 18.10 – Robertiano Apr 19 '19 at 07:19
still works in debian testing, but the nautilus stuff is a bit different is xfce4 of course. – Omar and Lorraine Oct 08 '20 at 12:15

score 18 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 13 '15 at 22:36

As simply or shortly, You can set default folders with help of xdg-user-dirs-update command.

Run following command in your case:

xdg-user-dirs-update --set DESKTOP "$HOME/Desktop"

Then logout and login back to show/change effect.

From man xdg-user-dirs-update:

NAME
       xdg-user-dirs-update - Update XDG user dir configuration

SYNOPSIS
       xdg-user-dirs-update [OPTION...] [--set NAME PATH...]

DESCRIPTION
       xdg-user-dirs-update updates the current state of the users user-dirs.dir. If none existed before then one is created
       based on the system default values, or falling back to the old non-translated filenames if such directories exists. The
       list of old directories used are: ~/Desktop, ~/Templates and ~/Public.

Why is my desktop the same as home folder?

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