How to give Flatpak access to folders?

How to give Flatpak access to folders?

Flatpak apps are sand-boxed and containerized apps with minimal permissions. If you want to access any other folders beyond the pre-configured ones, you need to configure permissions for the respective Flatpak.

GUI

The easiest way to do this is with a GUI like Flatseal:

CLI

Warning

This is only for advanced users who understand how to use the Linux command line and how to manipulate strings with it.

Note

The location of the overrides file is: ${HOME}/.local/share/flatpak/overrides/org.jellyfin.JellyfinServer

However, it is preferred to manage the file programmatically with flatpak override.

You can do this also from the command line by adding lines to the respective Flatpak overrides file.

Here is an example:

flatpak override --user --filesystem="~/my custom folder read-only folder:ro" org.jellyfin.JellyfinServer

Here are a few more, found in the comments of earlier versions of the build manifest:

# Needed for v4l2m2m
flatpak override --user --device=all                 org.jellyfin.JellyfinServer
# Entire user home directory
flatpak override --user --filesystem=home:ro         org.jellyfin.JellyfinServer
# Entire system
flatpak override --user --filesystem=host:ro         org.jellyfin.JellyfinServer
# Downloads folder
flatpak override --user --filesystem=xdg-download:ro org.jellyfin.JellyfinServer
# Music folder
flatpak override --user --filesystem=xdg-music:ro    org.jellyfin.JellyfinServer
# Pictures folder
flatpak override --user --filesystem=xdg-pictures:ro org.jellyfin.JellyfinServer
# Videos folder
flatpak override --user --filesystem=xdg-videos:ro   org.jellyfin.JellyfinServer

Remove :ro if you want to give full access for example for tag editing of media files within Jellyfin. Read-only access is usually sufficient.