XDG-USER-DIR(1) User Commands XDG-USER-DIR(1)

xdg-user-dir - Find an XDG user dir

xdg-user-dir [NAME]

xdg-user-dir looks up the current path for one of the special XDG user dirs.

This command expects the name of an XDG user dir as argument. The possible names are:

DESKTOP
DOWNLOAD
TEMPLATES
PUBLICSHARE
DOCUMENTS
MUSIC
PICTURES
VIDEOS

The values are looked up in the user-dirs.dirs file. This file is created by the xdg-user-dirs-update utility.

The XDG_CONFIG_HOME environment variable determines where the user-dirs.dirs file is located.

xdg-user-dirs-update(1)

Alexander Larsson <alexl@redhat.com>

Developer
04/08/2026 XDG