Ubuntu – How to stop Thunar from being default file browser

Sorry, It seems Thunar does't have this functionality yet (I've exhaustively searched in Google and XFCE Documentation, there is no mentioning of this feature in official docs).

Thunar stores it's user configuration changes in ~/.config/Thunar/thunarrc file. The options currently supported are listed here. You can see, there is no settings for shortening file name. These are some advanced settings which neither support it.

I suggest you using nautilus. You can install it with sudo apt-get install nautilus.

Alternatively, You can request a feature in by going to XFCE forum to implement this or even you can help them by your coding skill, if you want.

For more information, see thunar faq or visit Official documentation for thunar.

After a lot of tries, I came upon the very simple method given above by Gill Bates, which was to

1. Go into System Settings
2. Switch default manager to something else
3. Switch it back

So I did that, then closed and reopened Firefox and sure enough, it worked like a charm. Maybe I can invoke Occam's Razor here...