I’ve tried every tutorial I could find. From symlinking the desired terminal to gnome-terminal, or using the update-alternatives command to using the gsettings command to set the default terminal. Nothing works.
What is the definitive way to set the default terminal for this GUI action? And why is this so hard to do?!
I’m on Fedora if it’s relevant.
Went down the rabbit hole for you while drinking some tea listening to the rain - it looks like in the future there is a new app/proposal for FreeDesktop to use
xdg-terminal-execas the new/default way and it’s hard coded into the GNOME “gio” code over here (ctrl+f search xdg-terminal-exec): https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/glib/-/blob/main/gio/gdesktopappinfo.cThat said, it looks like the nautilus-open-terminal Nautilus extension is shipped as part of
gnome-terminalso it’s hard coded to run that terminal not using the above code. Instead, you’d need to leverage a different extension callednautilus-open-any-terminalfor now until the landscape changes: https://github.com/Stunkymonkey/nautilus-open-any-terminal(disclaimer: not using GNOME/Nautilus or Fedora, theorycraft from me)
I hope it won’t take too long until this is implemented. It’s baffling that such a thing is not possible in an easy and accessible way and instead is hardcoded.
This is unfortunately a choice the Nautilus (GNOME) folks have taken; in other file managers (Thunar for XFCE, Caja for MATE, etc.) the ability to use custom actions are a first class citizen. Within Nautilus, the
nautilus-actionsproject was superseded by thefilemanager-actionsproject which was then archived: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Archive/filemanager-actions - a custom GNOME action might be something likegio open /path/to/terminal.desktop %d(where %d is the directory from Nautilus)There are 3rd party attempts to recreate what was stripped out of/abandoned in Nautilus such as this one: https://github.com/bassmanitram/actions-for-nautilus
Since you have Nautilus, i’m assuming you have the rest of GNOME too.
GNOME Settings should have a default apps tab, so you should be able to change it from there.
Otherwise,
org.gnome.desktop.default-applications.terminal exec 'desired-terminal', and obviously don’t forget to swap that for whichever one you want to useAs I said I have tried this and it isn’t working.
Probably not what you want, but you could change your file manager from Nautilus to one that supports this feature. I like Thunar since it comes with a bulk file renamer that works pretty well (I hoard TV shows and movies).
I don’t have a Fedora workstation in front of me right now, but it memory serves me right there’s a “default applications” or similar menu in Gnome’s settings.
That doesn’t apply to the “Open in Terminal” option in Nautilus right click menu.
There is an extension that lets you open in a different terminal. I don’t have GNOME or Nautilus installed, so no idea if and how it works, just found it through a web search. Maybe it helps: https://github.com/Stunkymonkey/nautilus-open-any-terminal
Edit: Never mind. I see it’s already posted in the replies.
Depending on your gnome version, you can’t
I ran into the same problem some time ago. My solution is not ideal, but it works fine. In
gnome-terminal --preferencesgo to profile -> command, and as custom command I putopen-wezterm-here. This could be the terminal you’re using. Set ‘when commands exits’ to Exit terminal. It does show gnome-terminal for a split second. But that doesn’t really bother me anymore.
