Carlos Barth

Setting default terminal in XFCE without xfce4-settings

[Carlos Barth] - 10 Mar 2024

This is the kind of tip that took me a while to figure out because I could not find exactly what I was looking for anywhere.

I wanted to set the default terminal application for exo-open in xfce4 without relying on xfce4-settings. Exo-open is used by XFCE when you click in (e.g.) “Open Terminal Here” within Thunar. The following error message may appear if you don’t install XFCE’s default terminal emulator (i.e. xfce4-terminal):

Failed to launch preferred application for category "TerminalEmulator". Could not find fallback TerminalEmulator application.

In my case, while using minimal templates at Qubes-OS I wanted to stick with my favorite terminal emulator (xterm), but I wanted to use Thunar as a file manager. I did not want to install anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary to make Thunar work with xterm.

Problem is: most of the comments I’ve found relied on the need to install xfce4-settings and change the setting using the GUI. Even those suggesting xconf-query to manipulate settings with a CLI would not point me towards the right setting (the likely reason is that there’s none).

Fortunately, the solution is really simple. Just Create a helpers.rc file (if it doesn’t already exists) at the following location:

~/.config/xfce4/helpers.rc

Just add the following line:

TerminalEmulator=xterm

And that’s it. You can do the same with other preferred applications, such as:

MailReader=thunderbird
WebBowser=debian-sensible-browser

And so on.

That’s it! I did not even have to restar thunar or anything to make it work.

Hope this helps!