XDG-USER-DIRS-UPD(1) User Commands XDG-USER-DIRS-UPD(1) NAME xdg-user-dirs-update - Update XDG user dir configuration SYNOPSIS xdg-user-dirs-update [OPTION...] [--set NAME PATH...] DESCRIPTION xdg-user-dirs-update updates the current state of the users user-dirs.dirs. If none existed before then one is created based on the system default val- ues, or falling back to the old non-translated filenames if such directo- ries exists. The list of old directories used are: ~/Desktop, ~/Templates and ~/Public. If an old configuration exists it is updated with any new default directo- ries. Additionally, any configured directories that point to non-existing locations are reset by pointing then to the users home directory. This typ- ically happens when the users removed the directory, so they likely don't want to use it anymore. On the first run a user-dirs.locale file is created containing the locale that was used for the translation. This is used later by GUI tools like xdg-user-dirs-gtk-update to detect if the locale was changed, letting you to migrate from the old names. xdg-user-dirs-update is normally run automatically at the start of a user session to update the XDG user dirs according to the users locale. OPTIONS The following options are understood: --help Print help output and exit. --force Update existing user-dirs.dirs, but force a full reset. This means: Don't reset nonexisting directories to HOME, rather recreate the direc- tory. Never use backwards compatible non-translated names. Always recreate user-dirs.locale. --dummy-output PATH Write the configuration to PATH instead of the default configuration file. Also, no directories are created. --set NAME PATH Sets the XDG user dir with the given name. NAME should be one of the following: DESKTOP DOWNLOAD TEMPLATES PUBLICSHARE DOCUMENTS MUSIC PICTURES VIDEOS PATH must be an absolute path, e.g. $HOME/Some/Directory. FILES The XDG user dirs configuration is stored in the user-dirs.dirs file in the location pointed to by the XDG_CONFIG_HOME environment variable. ENVIRONMENT The XDG_CONFIG_HOME environment variable determines where the user-dirs.dirs file is located. SEE ALSO xdg-user-dir(1), user-dirs.dirs(5), user-dirs.defaults(5), user- dirs.conf(5). AUTHOR Alexander Larsson <alexl@redhat.com> Developer XDG 08/27/2026 XDG-USER-DIRS-UPD(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | FILES | ENVIRONMENT | SEE ALSO | AUTHOR
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