Saturday, October 12, 2019

Ubuntu Filechooser Dialog Size

Gnome 3 Filechooser Dialog Size

I love GNU/Linux. I've used Ubuntu for well over ten years, and it's stable, powerful and "just works". And if anything doesn't work quite the way you like, you can almost always fix it. Here's a great example.

A couple of years back, Ubuntu switched to the Gnome 3 graphics system. When I upgraded to this recently, I noticed that the file chooser dialog now filled the entire window. I found this disconcerting, because without the context of the original program in the background, it was easy to forget what you were trying to accomplish.

With Windows or MacOS, you'd just have to put up with the decisions of the UI design. But with GNU/Linux, a few second's googling brought up the following command: 

gsettings set org.gtk.Settings.FileChooser window-size '(800, 600)'
Hope that helps anyone else wanting smaller file choosers in Gnome 3.