AppImage can't set itself as the default web browser (Reason in the description).

[Samueru-sama]

Captchas

• [X] I have read the instructions.
• [X] I have searched existing issues and avoided creating duplicates.
• [X] I am not filing an enhancement request.

What happened?

After a read some comments in the discord, turns out that the Zen AppImage can't set itself as the default web browser, it will work the first time you try but if you close and reopen the browser it won't be the default one anymore.

The reason for this issue is that when you set Zen as the default, it generates its own .desktop entry in ${XDG_DATA_HOME:-$HOME/.local/share}/applications but the Exec= part contains the full path to the zen binary in tmp, which is a location that changes name every time Zen is relaunched.

To fix this issue Zen needs to check the env variable $APPIMAGE which contains the full path to the AppImage and use that when generating the .desktop entry.

Note in the meantime this issue can be fixed by editing the .desktop and pointing the Exec= line to the Zen AppImage location and that will set Zen as the default web browser even if it says it isn't.

Reproducible?

• [ ] I have checked that this issue cannot be reproduced on Mozilla Firefox.

Version

1.0.1-a.5

What platform are you seeing the problem on?

Linux

Relevant log output

No response

[linear[bot]]

ZEN-1794 AppImage can't set itself as the default web browser (Reson in the description).

[neogeographica]

This bug also means you start accumulating multiple "userapp-Zen Browser-*.desktop" files in that .local/share/applications directory.

Also really garbages up the content of .config/mimeapps.list

[Samueru-sama]

I checked that on the librewolf appimage you can't set librewolf as the default browser, I don't know if this is also missing from other versions of librewolf.

I wonder how the snap of firefox and other web browsers handle this, because those are also squashfs images that get mounted at random locations like appimages.

edit: I actually tried to install snap to see how it works there and I can't because snap has a hard dependency to system LOL

[RayZ3R0]

@Samueru-sama Appimage has that issue yeah. Which distro are you on? If you are on ubuntu based distro, you can try using pacstall

[Samueru-sama]

@Samueru-sama Appimage has that issue yeah. Which distro are you on? If you are on ubuntu based distro, you can try using pacstall

I'm on Artix linux and I use the appimage with AM.

AM already puts the right .desktop in place and it is already the default app so this issue I opened doesn't affect me, however fixing the issue should be as simple as changing the "argv0" in the code to check for $APPIMAGE which contains the path to the actual appimage and not the zen binary.

I may be able to PR a fix but I just don't know where to even look in the source code to see how Zen determines its location.

[RayZ3R0]

Ah, okay. We'll look into it