Gnome-shell user, since a while, my default file manager has been pcmanfm (because it still allows typeahead, which nautilus has dropped a while back).
Except I don’t know what “default file manager” means anymore: I don’t actually remember how I set it - and hence I am unable to set it on another computer, or to reset to nautlius.
I have googled quite a bit, and the most common reply seems to be that one needs to set the handler for the “inode/directory” MIME type via the “xdg-mime” app. Except that if I do
xdg-mime query default inode/directory
I get as output “aalacarte-made-8.desktop”. But again, “xdg-open ~/” (luckily) starts pcmanfm, not alacarte. And by the way, pcmanfm is launched even if I use xdg-open on an sftp URL (arguably not related to the “inode/directory” MIME type).
Another piece of advice I found suggests looking at files in ~/.local/share/applications, specifically mimeapps.list and mimeinfo.cache. But I checked and pcmanfm appears in neither of the two.
Ultimately, I need this answer because for a program I maintain, I want to be able to launch a user’s default file manager.
Thanks for any suggestion.