Xdg-desktop-portal.service what for?

Ask Fedora
1

journalctl constantly says:

09 19:36:05 DELLV systemd[1684]: graphical-session.target - Current graphical user session is inactive.
09 19:36:05 DELLV systemd[1684]: Dependency failed for xdg-desktop-portal.service - Portal service.
09 19:36:05 DELLV systemd[1684]: xdg-desktop-portal.service: Job xdg-desktop-portal.service/start failed with result 'dependency'.
09 19:36:05 DELLV systemd[1684]: graphical-session.target - Current graphical user session is inactive.
09 19:36:05 DELLV systemd[1684]: Dependency failed for xdg-desktop-portal.service - Portal service.
09 19:36:05 DELLV systemd[1684]: xdg-desktop-portal.service: Job xdg-desktop-portal.service/start failed with result 'dependency'.

for reference

OS = Fedora 44 LXQT

$ sudo dnf list --installed  *xdg*
Installed packages (available for reinstall, available for upgrade)
libqtxdg.x86_64                4.4.0-3.fc44  updates
python3-pyxdg.noarch           0.28-1.fc44   fedora
xdg-dbus-proxy.x86_64          0.1.7-1.fc44  updates
xdg-desktop-portal.x86_64      1.21.2-1.fc44 updates
xdg-desktop-portal-gtk.x86_64  1.15.3-3.fc44 fedora
xdg-desktop-portal-lxqt.x86_64 1.4.0-2.fc44  updates
xdg-user-dirs.x86_64           0.18-11.fc43  fedora
xdg-utils.noarch               1.2.1-5.fc44  fedora


$ systemctl status xdg-desktop-portal.service
Unit xdg-desktop-portal.service could not be found.

What is wrong?

2

It’s a user service so:

systemctl --user status xdg-desktop-portal.service
3 
$ systemctl status xdg-desktop-portal.service
Unit xdg-desktop-portal.service could not be found.

That should be asystemctl --user status xdg-desktop-portal.service. Should look like this:

└─➜ systemctl --user status xdg-desktop-portal.service                                                                                                                                              18:04 Tue 09-Jun
â—Ź xdg-desktop-portal.service - Portal service
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/xdg-desktop-portal.service; static)
    Drop-In: /usr/lib/systemd/user/service.d
             └─10-timeout-abort.conf
     Active: active (running) since Fri 2026-06-05 22:03:46 BST; 3 days ago
 Invocation: 7c6a157bd9d14e678d856389a8c22f7d
   Main PID: 3205 (xdg-desktop-por)
      Tasks: 7 (limit: 38296)
     Memory: 36.1M (peak: 49.4M, swap: 1.9M, swap peak: 2.2M)
        CPU: 13.074s
     CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/session.slice/xdg-desktop-portal.service
             └─3205 /usr/libexec/xdg-desktop-portal

PG beat me to it.

4 
$ systemctl --user status xdg-desktop-portal.service
* xdg-desktop-portal.service - Portal service
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/xdg-desktop-portal.service; static)
    Drop-In: /usr/lib/systemd/user/service.d
             `-10-timeout-abort.conf
     Active: inactive (dead)

Jun 09 20:55:50 DELLV systemd[1684]: Dependency failed for xdg-desktop-portal.service - Portal service.
Jun 09 20:55:50 DELLV systemd[1684]: xdg-desktop-portal.service: Job xdg-desktop-portal.service/start failed with result 'dependenc>
Jun 09 20:55:50 DELLV systemd[1684]: Dependency failed for xdg-desktop-portal.service - Portal service.
Jun 09 20:55:50 DELLV systemd[1684]: xdg-desktop-portal.service: Job xdg-desktop-portal.service/start failed with result 'dependenc>

Maybe reinstall something?

5

Can you also show the output of:

systemctl --user status graphical-session.target

That seems to be the only dependency that xdg-desktop-portal.service has, so I’m curious what happened to it.

6

xdg-desktop-portal.service used to be dbus activated now it use graphical-session.target to start, not all DE’s support graphical-session.target.

7

I recently fixed cinnamon-session

and removed my ugly hack to start graphical-session.

8 
$ systemctl --user status graphical-session.target
* graphical-session.target - Current graphical user session
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/graphical-session.target; static)
     Active: inactive (dead)
       Docs: man:systemd.special(7)
archer@DELLV:~$
9

Interesting, so maybe LXQt doesn’t support it then.

10

It doesn’t look like it

11

This appears to be a problem with F44 XFCE also. xdg-desktop-portal.service refuses to start even with a fresh install of F44 XFCE.

Is there an easy workaround that is available?

12

The easiest fix is to revert this change.

13

Thank you for the reply.

The XFCE Spin does not provide Wayland as an option at login. Does than mean no workaround for XFCE and LXQT?

14

Your response make no sense, that revert has nothing to do with wayland or X.

It just switches xdg-desktop-portal.service from target to dbus activated.

15

Thank you.

sudo nano /usr/lib/systemd/user/xdg-desktop-portal.service

change file to:

[Unit]
Description=Portal service
PartOf=graphical-session.target
Requisite=dbus.service
After=dbus.service

[Service]
Type=dbus
BusName=org.freedesktop.portal.Desktop
ExecStart=/usr/libexec/xdg-desktop-portal
Slice=session.slice

stop and restart the service

systemctl --user stop xdg-desktop-portal.service
systemctl --user start xdg-desktop-portal.service
16

Thank you all :+1: This has solved the mystery to me of why the File and Folder selection buttons of the LocalSend flatpak were not working for me on Fedora Xfce.