Fedora – nautilus: open-with but don’t change default

fedoragnome3nautilus

In recent versions of Gnome (Gnome 3.30 on Fedora 29, if it matters), it seems that when using right-click "Open With Other Application" from Nautilus, the option in the Select Application dialog to set the selected application as default has been removed, such that it now simply ALWAYS sets the application as default. I like to use open-with-other as a one-off thing, leaving the default as it was, so this behavior is disruptive to me.

Is there a way to change this behavior so that it does not conflate open-with-other and changing the default application? I assume there's at least a dconf/gsettings value I can change, but I can't find it.

Note that I am NOT asking how to set default applications – I am asking how to use open-with-other but without ALSO changing the default automatically.

EDIT: Added fedora tag

Best Answer

This is a known bug

What you can do is:

  1. right-click-open your file with a secondary application
  2. right-click on the file and go to properties -> Open With
  3. Set your default application here

It should be persistent now

Alternatively you can set the entry in ~/.config/mimeapps.list in the [Default Applications] section.

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