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Prevent Desktop, Downloads directories being created on startup

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  • Last reply by piperfw

piperfw
piperfw

When thunderbird launches, directories "Desktop" and "Downloads" are created in my user home directory. I cannot find in settings how to disable this. The save location for attachments is set to ~/downloads.

thunderbird 102.8.0-2 on 6.2.2-arch1-1 x86_64

When thunderbird launches, directories "Desktop" and "Downloads" are created in my user home directory. I cannot find in settings how to disable this. The save location for attachments is set to ~/downloads. thunderbird 102.8.0-2 on 6.2.2-arch1-1 x86_64

Chosen solution

I think I have found a fix. It seems that on Linux Thunderbird may use ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs provided by xdg-user-dirs-update to determine whether/where new folders are created on startup. Installing this package and in particular setting XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop", XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/downloads" (the actually directory I use for downloads on my system) appears to have prevented Thunderbird from creating ~/Desktop, ~/Downloads.

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piperfw
piperfw Question owner

Chosen Solution

I think I have found a fix. It seems that on Linux Thunderbird may use ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs provided by xdg-user-dirs-update to determine whether/where new folders are created on startup. Installing this package and in particular setting XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop", XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/downloads" (the actually directory I use for downloads on my system) appears to have prevented Thunderbird from creating ~/Desktop, ~/Downloads.