around a month ago, dolphin started acting strangely.
when I clicked on an item, it would show a context menu with all possible applications that could open it. (its been some time so I may confuse this a little)
it had an option to disable it and said that I can enable it again from preferences, but I found no option in preferences that does this.
was this a virus? or some new dolphin feature that I triggered?
A month afterward your memories must not be very accurate.
My bet is what you are looking for is right click on a file > open with and select the application you want to associate with the currently selected file’s type, or application association in systemsettings,
Im pretty sure it was showing some form of menu of all the applications registered to the mime type after just clicking on a file.
nothing on the internet showed any behavior similar. I really hope it was not some malicious software.
You can get a list of all applications that support the file type in the “Open With” sub menu that should be the second option in the context menu.
I’m not familiar with any way to disable the “Open With” menu except removing all of the relevant entries under File Associations from all the file types.
the open with openned with a simple left click(or maybe double click) and without having to right click and choose it.
what I was afraid of, this behavior is not well known, and clamtk didnt find anything.
I just hope it was some third party widget’s harmless feature and nothing more.
You did not tell us your distribution or Plasma & Dolphin versions…
I am not quite sure I understand what is happening, but you could check in System Settings
- if single or double click to open a file is enabled
and - if your left and right mouse buttons are interchanged (this is e.g. possible for left-handers).
There also is no known malware that targets KDE Plasma or the Dolphin file manager…
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Yes, I assume diskusser3434853 clicked a file with no mime type association whatsoever (which would open a menu asking for which file to open it with on a simple left click).
The other possibility I see – which I am less familiar with – is that they might have used the Flatpak version of Dolphin and clicking a file might have triggered a sandbox portal to ask which application to open the file with. This might potentially then even trigger for files which would usually have a file association.
In either case the “option to disable it and said that I can enable it again from preferences” would then be a checkbox asking if it should always be opened with that application.
Right, furthermore I would pretty much rule out the possibility that this was a virus or some other mailicious software because any software that is executed by a user would have no further reason to manipulate the user into opening any other application (unless it was about getting the user to enter a password somewhere).
I used the default dolphin that came with kubuntu jammy and have always kept my apt packages up to date. and what I clicked on back then was normal text and image files.