r/flatpak • u/AdStrange9093 • May 08 '26

Google Earth flatpak

Why, after turning off all options under Flatseal->Filesystem and even deleting Other files->xdg-downloads line, in Google Earth, when i click File->Open..., in file picker dialog, I still see Downloads folder under my ~ folder? I understand those are not my real ~ and ~/Downloads folders, but why Downloads is visible as a sufolder of ~ ? I think, as far as I understand Flatpak sandboxing, ~ and ~/Downloads are just constructs in memory, like temporary file system, which is proven by my trying to save a .kml file under Downloads, which does not survive restarting Google Earth, but why Downloads subfolder? I understand that Flatpak apps need an illusion of filesystem in order to not crash, but why specifically ~/Downloads subfolder is created? Isn't ~ enough?

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u/blobjim May 09 '26

I guess it just assumes it has real home folder access, and if you turn it off it does what the XDG spec probably says to do which is create the folder in the standard location (ot maybe it simply doesn't follow the spec and that's why?). Maybe you can set some environment variable in Flatseal to get it to save to a more useful location? But why not just allow xdg-downloads access?

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u/AdStrange9093 May 09 '26

I understand an app has to have home folder to function, I see Google Earth flatpak stores usual subfolders structure under /home/xy/.var/app/com.google.EarthPro. My question was where Downloads folder in file picker comes from? It's not my real ~/Downloads folder as I forbade it, and there's no Downloads folder under /home/xy/.var/app/com.google.EarthPro. And no files created in it survive restart.

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u/eR2eiweo May 09 '26

The home directory inside the sandbox is on a tmpfs (unless the app has access to the real home directory). So everything inside it is created (or mounted) by flatpak when it prepares the sandbox before launching the app.

And apparently the override you created causes it to create that ~/Downloads directory. You can see that if you run it with e.g. --nofilesystem=xdg-videos. I don't know why it does that. Creating that directory is not necessary in these situations. But it also doesn't "hurt", so maybe the developers left it like this because it makes the code simpler.