Then, that could be the problem, rather than which directory in which the file is located. I'll remove everything after the last line's last character, and see if that fixes it. I'm assuming you didn't see ephoto tending to 'keep popping op'?

No, on ephoto. But this mime stuff can get kinda complicated. First of all there are multiple places a mimes file could be stored at and then there are defaults.list files and mimeapps.list files. And some locations are depreciated but still work and then not all apps implement this the same way or even at all. And then apps you install may alter these files or create one or more. And then over the years this stuff has been changing, hence the depreciated locations and so on. I just end up messing with it until I get it working the way I want. And sometimes that may mean altering desktop files also.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for the instructive explanation and letting me know that on your system, Browse opened only a single instance of pcmanfm and then 'stopped'.

The difference must be because I hit <Enter> after the last term, placing a <CR> there.

I wonder if @cordx may have accidentally done the same, in that he was able to duplicate what I was seeing?

So now, I'll go back to /root/.config and 'clean up' that file. It's likely still there as when I thought I would have to move it, I later noticed the target directory already had a file of the same name!

I appreciate your describing the 'current state of confusion' about these files, what they contain, and where they are located. In view of that, it's a pity there isn't some kind of a GUI that would automatically and correctly sort this out for the user!

vim doesn't show anything other than the two lines (and ~'s for null lines) rbtylee suggested

[Default Applications]
inode/directory=pcmanfm.desktop

in my /etc/xdg/mimeapps.list file. two lines, 55 characters. geany appends a line at the end, but geany appends a line to my most recent email which i know i didn't add one to.

i am fairly certain my issue initially was having mine in /root/.config. i used mv to move it to /etc/xdg. it occurred to me briefly that i might have overwritten an existing file, but i didn't use -f and my past snapshots don't have a mimeapps.list file in /etc/xdg at all so i believe one of the main differences is that i don't have all of the other entries you have there. i just have the two lines above and browse works without opening ephoto at all.