The beloved lightweight distro
When I'm saving downloaded files through firefox, attaching files to a mail, opening files with programs, etc. then I have to use the program's own file browser (in this case Firefox's).
My question is, is there a way I can globally add more directories?
In this case with Firefox specifically, to the left column along with Recent/Home/Desktop.
p.s. I'm using Arch Linux with i3wm and normally I use the terminal rather than any GUI file manager/browser
You might be able to do something with https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Desktop_Portal - it was designed for applications running in flatpack and wayland to be able to get things from the system. As such I believe it lets you use a system file picker to be able to access files outside of flatpack. For applications that support it you might be able to get it to work outside of flatpack to get a consistent file picker.
Though I have not tried it and it may or may not function without wayland. Not sure if there is a way to do something similar in X11 otherwise. At least not without configuring every applications that supports multiple file pickers to force them to use one (like I think firefox can use the kde on if it is running on kde? or is that just theming on the gtk one...).
In my experience, adding folder shortcuts in Thunar (XFCE's file manager) makes them also appear in Firefox. I believe it's some sort of config shared among all GTK apps. So you can try installing Thunar and adding shortcuts in the left pane, then see if they show up in Firefox and other apps.
I might be dumb for asking this, but have you tried dragging and dropping a folder into the sidebar? Would that not create a shortcut?
tl:dr no you're not dumb, and it's as easy as dragging and dropping a folder over to the sidebar
Oh sorry, I updated the "crosspost" where someone suggested doing just that but forgot to update this post. (To be fair on reddit crossposts are actual cross posts instead of two separate posts)
Anyway, apparently it was really that easy. GUI solutions for GUI problems
Although I did notice that Firefox seems to be using another file manager/browser than most of my other programs so I had to add some directories twice, but otherwise they're kind of global.
To be honest the ideal would be some system-wide directories but then also app-specific directories to avoid having tons of irrelevant directory shortcuts. (e.g. having video & music directories only for media players, torrent files for torrent clients, .gba files for gba emulators, etc.)