FileChooserNative is an abstraction of a dialog box suitable for use with “File/Open” or “File/Save as” commands. By default, this just uses a FileChooserDialog to implement the actual dialog. However, on certain platforms, such as Windows and macOS, the native platform file chooser is used instead. When the application is running in a sandboxed environment without direct filesystem access (such as Flatpak), FileChooserNative may call the proper APIs (portals) to let the user choose a file and make it available to the application.

While the API of FileChooserNative closely mirrors FileChooserDialog, the main difference is that there is no access to any Window or Widget for the dialog. This is required, as there may not be one in the case of a platform native dialog. Showing, hiding and running the dialog is handled by the NativeDialog functions.

## {gtkfilechoosernative-typical-usage}

In the simplest of cases, you can the following code to use FileChooserDialog to select a file for opening:

GtkFileChooserNative *native;
GtkFileChooserAction action = GTK_FILE_CHOOSER_ACTION_OPEN;
gint res;

native = gtk_file_chooser_native_new ("Open File",
                                      parent_window,
                                      action,
                                      "_Open",
                                      "_Cancel");

res = gtk_native_dialog_run (GTK_NATIVE_DIALOG (native));
if (res == GTK_RESPONSE_ACCEPT)
  {
    char *filename;
    GtkFileChooser *chooser = GTK_FILE_CHOOSER (native);
    filename = gtk_file_chooser_get_filename (chooser);
    open_file (filename);
    g_free (filename);
  }

g_object_unref (native);

To use a dialog for saving, you can use this:

GtkFileChooserNative *native;
GtkFileChooser *chooser;
GtkFileChooserAction action = GTK_FILE_CHOOSER_ACTION_SAVE;
gint res;

native = gtk_file_chooser_native_new ("Save File",
                                      parent_window,
                                      action,
                                      "_Save",
                                      "_Cancel");
chooser = GTK_FILE_CHOOSER (native);

gtk_file_chooser_set_do_overwrite_confirmation (chooser, TRUE);

if (user_edited_a_new_document)
  gtk_file_chooser_set_current_name (chooser,
                                     _("Untitled document"));
else
  gtk_file_chooser_set_filename (chooser,
                                 existing_filename);

res = gtk_native_dialog_run (GTK_NATIVE_DIALOG (native));
if (res == GTK_RESPONSE_ACCEPT)
  {
    char *filename;

    filename = gtk_file_chooser_get_filename (chooser);
    save_to_file (filename);
    g_free (filename);
  }

g_object_unref (native);

For more information on how to best set up a file dialog, see FileChooserDialog.

## {gtkfilechooserdialognative-responses}

FileChooserNative inherits from NativeDialog, which means it will return GTK_RESPONSE_ACCEPT if the user accepted, and GTK_RESPONSE_CANCEL if he pressed cancel. It can also return GTK_RESPONSE_DELETE_EVENT if the window was unexpectedly closed.

## {gtkfilechooserdialognative-differences}

There are a few things in the GtkFileChooser API that are not possible to use with FileChooserNative, as such use would prohibit the use of a native dialog.

There is no support for the signals that are emitted when the user navigates in the dialog, including: * FileChooser::current-folder-changed * FileChooser::selection-changed * FileChooser::file-activated * FileChooser::confirm-overwrite

You can also not use the methods that directly control user navigation: * fileChooserUnselectFilename * fileChooserSelectAll * fileChooserUnselectAll

If you need any of the above you will have to use FileChooserDialog directly.

No operations that change the the dialog work while the dialog is visible. Set all the properties that are required before showing the dialog.

## {gtkfilechooserdialognative-win32}

On windows the IFileDialog implementation (added in Windows Vista) is used. It supports many of the features that FileChooserDialog does, but there are some things it does not handle:

• Extra widgets added with fileChooserSetExtraWidget.
• Use of custom previews by connecting to FileChooser::update-preview.
• Any FileFilter added using a mimetype or custom filter.

If any of these features are used the regular FileChooserDialog will be used in place of the native one.

## {gtkfilechooserdialognative-portal}

When the org.freedesktop.portal.FileChooser portal is available on the session bus, it is used to bring up an out-of-process file chooser. Depending on the kind of session the application is running in, this may or may not be a GTK+ file chooser. In this situation, the following things are not supported and will be silently ignored:

• Extra widgets added with fileChooserSetExtraWidget.
• Use of custom previews by connecting to FileChooser::update-preview.
• Any FileFilter added with a custom filter.

## {gtkfilechooserdialognative-macos}

On macOS the NSSavePanel and NSOpenPanel classes are used to provide native file chooser dialogs. Some features provided by FileChooserDialog are not supported:

• Extra widgets added with fileChooserSetExtraWidget, unless the widget is an instance of GtkLabel, in which case the label text will be used to set the NSSavePanel message instance property.
• Use of custom previews by connecting to FileChooser::update-preview.
• Any FileFilter added with a custom filter.
• Shortcut folders.

The text used for the label on the accept button in the dialog, or Nothing to use the default text.

The text used for the label on the cancel button in the dialog, or Nothing to use the default text.