Whenever I use the “Open With Other Application” from a right-click menu in Nautilus a few times in a row, that application becomes the new default.
This behavior adds uncertainty to what happens when I double-click a file. For example, if I usually want a simple preview with Image Viewer when I double-click a jpeg file, but one day I need to do some editing and open the files in Gimp using “Open With Other Application” context menu option, then Gimp becomes the new default app.
Is there a way to disable this behavior, so manual choices of default applications are respected and not automatically changed?
This usually indicates that there is no default application specified for a mime type and glib falls back to whatever the most recently used one is. This is an issue with some distros not shipping with a config file that specifies those. The solution to that (for nautilus <= 42) is to specify default applications for these mime types by going to “Properties”, “Open With” and then select a default app there. Then double clicking will always use the default application, regardless of what your last choice in open with was.
With nautilus 43 the way the open with dialog works has been changed and allows changing the default application directly from it.
The solution to that (for nautilus <= 42) is to specify default applications for these mime types by going to “Properties”, “Open With” and then select a default app there.
That has been broken for ages. I remember discussing it at Boston Summit back in 2014. Just tested now with nautilus 43.0: I opened an XML file using “Open With…”, selected Text Editor, toggled “Always use for this file type” and it just doesn’t work. Next time I try to open the file, it opens in Epiphany, not Text Editor. I’m sure we have a bug report for this already somewhere…