Caja file manager

BloodFeastMan

HI all, Caja seems to be the default file manager with Budgie at least, I would like to add custom items to the file context menu .. There's a ./scripts directory in ~/.config/caja, and maybe that's what I'm looking for, but I'm not seeing anything on how I can modify that pull down menu. The help file takes me to a page not found error. Can someone let me know if this is possible to do?

infinitymdm

BloodFeastMan I believe Nemo is the default file manager for Budgie. Caja is for MATE.

Between these two pages you should have enough info to tweak the Nemo context menu to your liking.
https://github.com/smurphos/nemo_actions_and_cinnamon_scripts
https://github.com/linuxmint/nemo/blob/master/files/usr/share/nemo/actions/sample.nemo_action

BloodFeastMan

infinitymdm Hmm, I've long since removed the original "files" link on my desktop, but this is what comes up when I open "Trash", however, I did find Nemo in the start menu. Anyway, thanks for the input, I'm sure it'll send me in the right direction!

Harvey

To my knowledge we never defaulted the budgie edition to use caja so I can only assume you installed it at some point.

BloodFeastMan

Harvey I've installed Thunar, but have never even heard of Caja until I opened the "About" option to see what it was called, as it doesn't indicate that on the title bar, this was the trash icon I'd opened, have never done anything with that. The install was done on 2023-08-21 per a bunch of timestamps in /etc, not sure if the iso has been updated since then.

Sebastian

BloodFeastMan
When you click on Trash, caja opens because Solus doesn't yet ship a list of default applications for common MIME types. In this case, GNOME and Budgie will launch whichever comes first alphabetically (the name of desktop file).
caja-folder-handler.desktop comes before nemo.desktop and org.xfce.Thunar.desktop.
Shipping a list of default applications for common MIME types is on the milestone list for Solus 4.6.

You can change this behaviour beforehand, however. So, if you wanna change that caja opens when you click on trash, you can run in terminal xdg-mime default nemo.desktop inode/directory if you want nemo to open and xdg-mime default org.xfce.Thunar.desktop inode/directory if you want thunar to open.

BloodFeastMan

Sebastian That would make sense, then. Also, it looks to me like both Caja and Nemo are forks of the same project.

Sebastian

In Budgie, you can also set default file browser graphically in Budgie Control Center, on Default-Applications tab:

Brandal

Yea, I was thrown off by this a while ago as well. As previously confirmed, Caja is not the default file manager in Solus Budgie, it does however indeed show up in the menu on a clean install, such is 'still' the case on August 17, 2025. The default file manager in Budgie is Nemo.

Unfamiliar (new) to Solus users may find themselves clicking on the Caja file manager and think Solus Budgie is broken 'out-of-the-box' as the presentation of Caja in default Solus Budgie theme appears as such.

Derek Taylor from the YouTube channel 'DistroTube' experienced the same at 3:50 minutes into the Solus 4.7 (Budgie) review:

Suggested solution:
Since Nemo is the default file manager and if you don't need more than what it offers and don't want unnecessary applications installed, simply remove Caja in the Software Center. (And install Nemo if you haven't already). Or, if you want to dip your toes into some CLI:
sudo eopkg remove caja

Additional option for OCD'ers:
If the +/- 14 MB of disk space is bothersome, you may remove a package named 'engrampa' as well. I looked at the reverse dependencies of Caja, which is a package named 'engrampa'. From what I gather, nothing in Budgie depends on 'engrampa'. I therefore removed it. (I may be wrong here, but so far no problems).
sudo eopkg remove engrampa

Alternative option:
If you want to keep Caja on your system, just not in your menu, you can simply move the caja.desktop file(s) (responsible for showing Caja in the menu) to a newly created 'backup' directory.

Install Nemo. If not through the software center, here the CLI command;
sudo eopkg install nemo
Open Nemo and right click in open space. Choose: 'Open as Root' -> Enter password.
Make a new directory named 'applications-backup' (or whatever you like) in /usr/share/
Move the Caja files in /usr/share/applications to /urs/share/applications-backup.
Moving the files rather than deleting them because it removes Caja from the menu and you can reverse the action by placing the files back. Caja simply reappears in menu.

I started with the latter, ended up doing the former realizing Caja is a MATE something and 'engrampa' is an Xfce something, if I'm not mistaken.

Good luck!

Staudey

Yeah, this will all be fixed with the next ISO release.

Budgie previously used engrampa as the default archive manager, which unfortunately depends on caja and thus pulled this file manager into the default Budgie install.
Back in February the default was switched to xarchiver, but there has been no ISO release since then, so the newest available Budgie ISO still installs Caja at this point. But it should be perfectly fine to remove both manually.

Btw @Brandal, removing caja will automatically remove engrampa as well, unless you tell eopkg to ignore dependencies, since, as you mentioned, engrampa is a reverse dependency of caja.