USER-DIRS.CONF(5)

🎀 USER-DIRS.CONF(5) 🎀

okay bestie, so this is a file formats man page — the manual name is literally USER-DIRS.CONF and the whole thing is lowkey about one little config file that runs your whole XDG folder situation. let's get into it 💅

✨ NAME ✨

user-dirs.conf — the configuration file for xdg-user-dirs-update, no cap

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so the /etc/xdg/user-dirs.conf file is a plain text file, and what it does is control the behavior of the xdg-user-dirs-update command. that's it. that's the whole job. 🫶

and like, users can have their own ~/.config/user-dirs.conf file too, which overrides the system-wide configuration. so your personal one wins, always, main character energy 👑

here are the keys it recognises:

• enabled=boolean — when you set this to False, xdg-user-dirs-update will not change the XDG user dirs configuration. like, it just sits there and does nothing. iconic honestly.
• filename_encoding=encoding — this sets the filename encoding to use. the encoding can be an explicit encoding name, such as UTF-8, or "locale", which means the encoding of the users locale will be used. iykyk 🌈

and the part you can't forget: lines beginning with a # character are ignored. comments, bestie. use them. 🍓

🦋 ENVIRONMENT 🦋

• XDG_CONFIG_DIRS — the system-wide user-dirs.conf file is located in this directory. the default is /etc/xdg.
• XDG_CONFIG_HOME — the per-user user-dirs.conf file is located in this directory. the default is $HOME/.config.

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

xdg-user-dirs-update(1) — go read that one too, it's giving sibling energy 💖

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Alexander Larsson <alexl@redhat.com> Developer

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! go forth and configure your dirs ✨

this has been the XDG edition, dated 04/08/2026, of USER-DIRS.CONF section 5 — mwah, love u, bye 💜