I am searching for a solution or hints on this small but bothering problem: on my system, Dolphin always opens a window with my personal folder instead of the trash unless I have an already open Dolphin window and click on the trash link there.
Tested:
.desktop link to the trash
Trash mini program on desktop
console with kioclient exec 'trash:/' (no further output on console)
console with dolphin "trash:/" (message from Dolphin "QLayout: Cannot add a null widget to QHBoxLayout/” which is IMHO unrelated)
The only way to get the trash to open is to set the “Show on startup” option in Dolphin interface settings to “show folders, tabs and window state from last time” instead of using the fixed address I prefer since Dolphin keeps adding new tabs whenever I open a link to a folder from desktop.
Any ideas/hints? Updating KDE to the latest version is something I would probably not be keen to do since I don’t know if I can handle the consequences
if i understand you want to always open dolphin with a single tab open pointing to Trash?
i guess that’s a thing to want, for some reason.
when i have trash open in dolphin and go to settings > start up > and select current location it will fill the text window with trash:/ which seems like what you want.
however when i close and reopen dolphin using the default desktop item it opens with my /home folder instead, ignoring that setting (in fact it seems to ignore that setting no matter what folder i choose).
checking the .desktop file in edit applications it shows the program as simply dolphin which i assume is hard coded to open with your /home directory.
if you change that to dolphin trash:/ it will open with just the trash tab open
at that point you can go back to config and change the start up option to last used again and it will still open with Trash in the first tab and active while any other locations are on separate tabs behind it.
this was tested on Dolphin Version 23.08.5, plasma 5
Yes - but not always, only if I click on the Trash symbol on my desktop (regardless whether it is the trash mini program or a .desktop file pointing to trash:/). Basically I just want the way it behaved per default in Plasma 5 back, since that is what AFAIR trash desktop icons should do: they usually open the trash folder when you (double)click on them, not some other folder
If you drag your trash from dolphin onto the desktop in Plasma 6, it creates a .desktop file. Mine looks like this:
As I noted above, “dolphin trash:/” does not do what it ought to on my computer if I try it from the console in Plasma. Therefore I was quite sure it won’t work if I manually create a starter which directly points to trash:/ but I tried your sugestion nevertheless: no, it does indeed not work I am afraid. The big question is: why?
The Dolphin version in Debian trixie which is the basis for my MX Linux is 25.04.3 by the way.
here is what i’ve noticed, you need to use F4 to have terminal view of your current location because that is the path that will be used if you click on the use current location button.
and you need to use the apply button before you OK out of the dialog box.
try this:
use F4 to open a terminal view
open dolphin and choose trash from the places menu
copy the path trash:/ to the clipboard
terminal should show /run/user/1000/kio-fuse-gMeMmq/trash as your location
now go to config > startup and paste the trash:/ text into the window
hit apply
then OK and exit dolphin
now when you fire up dolphin it should load the trash tab on startup.
sounds exactly as my problem. in the end i gave up, deleted (i.e. renamed) the whole ~/.config folder, created a new empty one and let the thing evolve. never spotted the bad file in my old config. but the root is definitely therein somewhere.
@skyfishgoo Thanks, but you are still stuck with wanting me to let Dolphin open trash every time I open Dolphin - I do not want that. I just want to open trash every time I… well, open trash…
@chartmann thanks! That tells me at least it is some config issue which means I can do something about it
You might be up to something: if I open trash:/ in Dolphin, I get another folder shown in the dolphin console, which seems to be a residue of my previous Plasma version: /run/user/1000/kio-fuse-zwWrCo/trash
Can anyone share the content of his ktrashrc file and check how that syncs with what the Dolphin console shows as path if thrash is opened?
my ktrashrc looks the same and when i navigate to Trash in dolphin it puts me into a /run dir … this is normal.
i’ve dragged Trash from dolphin to the desktop and now have the desktop folder version as well as my usual trash can widget.
in both cases (double click fro the folder and single click for the widget) opening the trash can will open new instance of dolphin with all of my previously open tabs in addition to the trash:/ tab.
@skyfishgoo Please switch the “Show on startup” option in Dolphin interface settings to any fixed fixed address instead of “show folders, tabs and window state from last time” which seems to be your current setting.
Close all Dolphin windows, open a Dolphin window again and make sure the changed setting is active (Dolphin should open the fixed address you have defined and no other tabs if you open it)
Now close any Dolphin windows again. Click on your trash icon or the widget to open the trash folder in Dolphin. Does Dolphin still open trash:/ now as it should, or does it open some other folder?
@smash I tried both the mini program and a .desktop file - both behave identical.
i can close all the open tabs and the open instances of dolphin and when i when i open dolphin from the taskbar it opens into the Desktop folder.
when i then close that, and click on my trashcan widget or double click on my trashcan .desktop folder, it opens into the trash:/ location without the Desktop tab (or any other tabs) along with it.
the same behavior happens if i paste trash:/ into the location and choose Apply , then OK and repeat the experiment.
however, if i then go back and set the location by browsing to the downloads folder using the icon next to the location text box, and do NOT hit Apply first, but just hit OK, then the change is not remembered and it will open back up in trash:/ and the location will still be set to trash:/.
so it seems to me there is a bug that affects the recording of the location unless you hit Apply, then OK.
Haha, playing around with that as you suggested actually works!
First of all, yes, I can confirm the bug that clicking “OK” without clicking “Apply” first does not change the start folder of Dolphin. That however did change the start folder of Dolphin, but it did not solve the trash folder issue, no matter how often I repeated the process with different folders.
But: I tried a little more, and chose not to use the “select folder” button as I usually do but rather to copy and paste the start folder address from another Dolphin window. The latter included a “/” at the end of the path, apart from that I could not see anything being different. After clicking “Apply” and “OK” once again, the trash folder problem miraculously vanished, and so far I could not reproduce it!
In case someone else has this issue: when I did the change mentioned above, the following files in my home folder were changed (all in .config):
QTProject.conf
dolphinrc
kdeglobals
ktrashrc
I suspect the manual entry for some reason triggered a rewrite of these files which then removed some error that had caused the problem. I don’t know which one though.
Damn it - please forget the above, here is an update to this topic: a while ago, the issue reappeared seemingly out of thin air, and I could not solve it doing what I thought was the solution above.
After quite some trying, it suddenly worked again - and I found the issue: I have no clue why, but it’s the terminal bar!! Here is what I did:
start folder is set to “/home/myuser/Desktop”
use another shell as default shell (chsh -s usr/bin/yourshell), not bash. I use fish, unsure though if this is the only shell where this happens
Now:
open Dolphin and make sure the terminal bar is NOT active. It does not matter if you close Dolphin or leave the window open.
Click on the trash icon on the desktop - (regardless whether it is the trash mini program or a .desktop file pointing to trash:/)
Dolphin will open a window with the terminal bar active - and it will show /home/myuser (not the start folder set above!), not trash:/
now close the terminal bar and close the window to tell Dolphin not to open the terminal bar in new windows.
click on the trash icon again.
Dolphin will open a window with the terminal bar NOT active - and it will show trash:/
As soon as you activate the terminal bar in a window that shows trash:/, the file browser will switch to /home/myuser.
The question is: why - and what can I do about it apart from using bash?
