If you have ever used an Electron-based application that deletes files or directories by moving them to the trash bin under KDE or other Qt-based DEs, it’s probable that you have experienced freezes while doing such action.
I have experienced these freezes while using Visual Studio Code on my two computers, both having Manjaro KDE as its operating system.
Searching for a fix for this issue I stumbled upon the issue vscode#54493. Unfortunately this issue was closed with a supposed fix but it came back somehow or it wasn’t really fixed. Anyhow, I managed to find a fix myself.
Apparently, the backend system for trash bin operations is gio by default, but apparently, at least under KDE, it doesn’t seem
that way and it seems like it defaults to something else.
I discovered this by playing around with the ELECTRON_TRASH variable, and I found that setting it to what it’s supposed
to be the default (gio) fixes the issue entirely. I guess it is set kioclient5 or kioclient.
After finding this I posted the solution comment in an issue I created on VS Code, but I am pretty sure it’s something that has to be fixed in Electron.
The fix
You can fix this issue by creating a file that gets executed automatically on startup/login.
I chose to do it in ~/.config/plasma-workspace/env/electron-trash-gio.sh
Edit that file and put this line
1export ELECTRON_TRASH=gio
After that, reboot or logout and log back for it to apply.
