Opening All Files in Disposable Qube

Community Guides
1

Just to be on the safe side, you may want to open all documents / files in a disposable qube. This prevents you from accidentally duoble-clicking a file and opening it on your work qube. This tutorial helps on that.

:warning: Reminder: As always, this is the internet. Don’t follow instructions from here unless you know what you are doing.

It’s as easy as pasting two files in your App qube (AppVM).

  1. Create a file .local/share/applications/open-in-dvm.desktop with the following:

    [Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Version=1.0
Name=Open in Disposable VM
Comment=Open file in a Disposable VM
TryExec=/usr/bin/qvm-open-in-vm
Exec=/usr/bin/qvm-open-in-vm --view-only '@dispvm' %f
Terminal=false
Categories=Qubes;Utility;

  2. Create a file .local/share/applications/mimeapps.list with the following:

    File was too long to put here. Get it here

Troubleshooting

If it is not opening anything, open the qube’s settings, then open the “Advanced” tab and make sure you select something other than “None” in Default DisposableVM Template.

Advanced stuff you can do

That’s beyond the scope of this guide, but you can then:

  • Making the disposable viewing qube be offline (not default)
  • open all applications in the same qube (to avoid having a new disposable qube open every time you open a document).

Further reading

Credits:

5 Likes
2

Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.
I’ve had this for a few years, and I think it was on the mailing list
before that.

1 Like
3

Thanks @deeplow - I already have my email VM opening URLs in an alternative VM, and I had been meaning to extend that to all other files types - you’ve saved me a lot of work :slight_smile:

1 Like
4

Also Marta will be working on making it possible to do this via the qube’s settings. (can’t seem to find the github issue for that).

5

I’m pretty sure it’s tracked here.

1 Like