About

This post shares how I have optimized the Firefox file dialog that is common for both file uploads and downloads on OpenBSD.

Background

OpenBSD secures Firefox and Chromium through its unveil(2) feature. As a result, each Firefox process is limited to accessing a select number of files and directories. For the average joe and jane, it means both ~/Downloads and /tmp are available for file downloads and uploads by default, and the rest of the filesystem remains off-limits.

The files referenced by /etc/firefox/unveil.* provide a complete list of the files and directories available to each Firefox process. The files can be edited to further restrict or expand filesystem access, and afterwards Firefox should be restarted for the changes to take effect.

Although unveil(2) happens to be one of the reasons I choose to use OpenBSD on the desktop, the file dialog that is available for selecting a file can be difficult to use because it assumes the entire filesystem is accessible and that's not the case 0on OpenBSD.

Bookmarks

Thankfully – the file dialog can be improved by pinning file locations we know unveil(2) allows access to. This can be done by editing the bookmarks file used by GTK file dialogs to show pinned file locations. This file can be found at ${HOME}/.config/gtk-3.0/bookmarks.

Context
The following command displays the contents of the _firefox user's bookmarks file. Note that the _firefox user runs Firefox on my system; this might not be the case for you. The file includes two entries: the user's default downloads directory and a custom directory (Extensions) manually added to /etc/firefox/unveil.{main,content}.

main@localhost$ cat /home/_firefox/.config/gtk-3.0/bookmarks
file:///home/_firefox/Downloads Downloads
file:///mnt/browser-extensions Extensions

Explanation

• file:///home/_firefox/Downloads Downloads
  This line pins the default Downloads directory, which is accessible to Firefox processes by default.
• file:///mnt/browser-extensions Extensions
  This line pins a custom Extensions directory. For this entry to be effective, the /mnt/browser-extensions path must be explicitly added to the unveil(2) rules for Firefox processes (eg: in /etc/firefox/unveil.{main,content}).

Conclusion

Context

With the bookmarks file configured, and Firefox restarted, the Firefox file dialog should now display the specified locations as easily navigable, pinned entries, as shown in the screenshot. This resolves the minor but recurring frustration of not having a straightforward way to access desired file locations within Firefox on OpenBSD.

Demo