Arch Linux

bhanakam

Member

Registered: 2015-09-19

Posts: 5

Cannot change file associations in Plasma 5.4

When I want to change the file associations ("Open with...") Plasma won't save the new setting.
I recently changed my default environment from Gnome to Plasma. After I did this I wanted to change the associations to the KDE tools, e.g. Gwenview instead of eog for JPEGs or Kate for text files. When I used earlier versions of Plasma it was easy to change this setting. It just worked.

Do you know this issue?

Rog131

Member

Registered: 2015-08-23

Posts: 90

Re: Cannot change file associations in Plasma 5.4

When you edit the application preference order in the KDE system settings.

Is the change saved to the ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list ?
Who is the owner of the mimeapps.list ? root or you ?
What are the access permissions of the mimeapps.list ?
Have you tried to rename/remove the mimeapps.list and then tried to edit the application preference order ?

bhanakam

Member

Registered: 2015-09-19

Posts: 5

Re: Cannot change file associations in Plasma 5.4

I'm sorry. I had a lot of trouble in the last weeks, so I totally forgot this problem.

Yes, it is saved to mimeapps.list and yes, I'm the owner of this file.
The permissions are -rw-r--r--. This should be ok.

No, I did not try to do that yet. Should I try to do this if the mimeapps.list is ok according to ownership and permissions?

Rog131

Member

Registered: 2015-08-23

Posts: 90

Re: Cannot change file associations in Plasma 5.4

No, I did not try to do that yet. Should I try to do this if the mimeapps.list is ok according to ownership and permissions?

With new mimeapps.list you are checking that there is no malformed configuration file. Another way is to make a new user and test the application preference order with the new user.

bhanakam

Member

Registered: 2015-09-19

Posts: 5

Re: Cannot change file associations in Plasma 5.4

Now I understand.

I just renamed the mimeapps.list to mimeapps.list_backup. Then I tried to associate files to applications, e.g. mp4 to vlc in the properties dialogue in dolphin. Unfortunately nothing has changed. The associations are written in the new clean mimeapps.list but it seems that the file is ignored.

Rog131

Member

Registered: 2015-08-23

Posts: 90

Re: Cannot change file associations in Plasma 5.4

There is: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/De … plications

...This involves writing into files called mimeapps.list which are looked up in the following order of paths:..

Do you have those other mimeapps.list files ?

bhanakam

Member

Registered: 2015-09-19

Posts: 5

Re: Cannot change file associations in Plasma 5.4

I only have the mimeapps.list mentioned above and ~/.config/mimeapps.list found in the table from the linked wiki page. In this ~/.config/mimeapps.list there are many associations, also the associations I want to change. When the other mimeapps.list is deprecated then ~/.config/mimeapps.list seems to be the one that is used for dolphin etc.

The permissions for this file are also -rw-r--r-- and I'm the owner.

Is it safe to rename this file in order to create a new clean one as we tried with the other one?

Rog131

Member

Registered: 2015-08-23

Posts: 90

Re: Cannot change file associations in Plasma 5.4

I only have the mimeapps.list mentioned above and ~/.config/mimeapps.list found in the table from the linked wiki page. In this ~/.config/mimeapps.list there are many associations, also the associations I want to change. When the other mimeapps.list is deprecated then ~/.config/mimeapps.list seems to be the one that is used for dolphin etc.

The permissions for this file are also -rw-r--r-- and I'm the owner.

Is it safe to rename this file in order to create a new clean one as we tried with the other one?

I think that two mimeapps.list is the problem - the KDE preference editor is editing the ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list but the (KF5 ?) applications are reading from the ~/.config/mimeapps.list (following order of paths) .

The files at the home are owned by the user so the user can edit them at will.

You could rename the ~/.config/mimeapps.list and the symlink the two mimeapps.list:

ln -s  ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list ~/.config/mimeapps.list

(or drag and drop with the file manager and pick the 'link here' option)

Then there will only one configuration file.

bhanakam

Member

Registered: 2015-09-19

Posts: 5

Re: Cannot change file associations in Plasma 5.4

I tried this and it works. Now the file associations can be changed as I wish.

Thank you!

pixel8r

Member

Registered: 2015-06-10

Posts: 3

Re: Cannot change file associations in Plasma 5.4

I tried this and it works. Now the file associations can be changed as I wish.

Thank you!

This worked for me too!

This really needs to be made more widely available. Can it go on the KDE wiki page? Perhaps under troubleshooting. I've had no success trying to change file associations in KDE/Plasma 5, until now. Previously the changes I made wouldn't stick, and KDE kept changing them back to what they were when I clicked 'Apply'. After making this change, finally it worked. Hooray!

Rog131

Member

Registered: 2015-08-23

Posts: 90

Re: Cannot change file associations in Plasma 5.4

I tried this and it works. Now the file associations can be changed as I wish.

Thank you!

This worked for me too!

This really needs to be made more widely available. Can it go on the KDE wiki page? Perhaps under troubleshooting. I've had no success trying to change file associations in KDE/Plasma 5, until now. Previously the changes I made wouldn't stick, and KDE kept changing them back to what they were when I clicked 'Apply'. After making this change, finally it worked. Hooray!

I have thought that this was solved with the  Bug 354179 - File associations cannot be changed if already defined in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mimeapps.list  - https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=354179 et. al. ?

If not then the bug should be reopend or a new bug report should be filed with the information that this is not same as the bug 354179.