How can I get the GTK file chooser dialogue to automatically focus and appear over other windows?

Question

For context, this is using ArchLinux, Gnome 45, Wayland/mutter 45.1, with Linux 6.1.58-1-lts and both gtk 4.12.3 and 3.24.38.

Whenever I use software on my system that opens a file chooser dialogue, I get a notification that says '[app title] is ready.' and the file chooser dialogue is opened in the background. I have to switch to that window as a separate action, This seems pointless and unnecessary. It seems like this is not the intended behavior, but I can't seem to figure out what is causing this to happen.

I've looked through settings in dconf-editor for org.gnome.desktop.notifications and org.gtk[.gtk4].settings and nothing seems to do the trick.

Answer 1

This sounds like it could be a case of the known issue at A reused GtkFileChooserNative isn't focused 2nd time #137 (in the flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal-gtk GitHub repo).

See also VS Code issue ticket [Linux] Open file or Open folder creates dialog behind active window #146422

There's a workaround for Xorg users (but not Wayland users) here that uses Devilspie 2 (I have no affiliation and have not tested this) to force focus. I took a web snapshot of the page just in case.

There's also a bug related to Qt and xdg-desktop-portal-gtk, but I don't know if that's relevant here (or it might be a duplicate of the other one?). See X11/Qt: file portal dialog placed behind main window #306 and https://invent.kde.org/qt/backports-tracker/-/issues/306.

I've been having a similar issue with Ubuntu+Xorg, and at the time of this writing, it seems to have stopped happening with Chrome, but still happens with VS Code. So I guess you can either get involved and make the fix happen, or just sit tight and wait patiently.

If there's any relation to [Bug]: showOpenDialog / showSaveDialog opens behind the app after the second call onward #32857, that could be good news, since that issue ticket apparently got fixed recently.