Summary

Applications that need to access user directories call the GLib.get_user_special_dir function to find the location of the directory, passing the appropriate GLib.UserDirectory value for the specific directory.

When distributed as a flatpak, the manifest needs to contain the permission that corresponds to the directory being accessed. In this case, the --filesystem=xdg-pictures permission allows the application to access the user’s Pictures directory.

Images are loaded using the GdkPixbuf.Pixbuf class and typically displayed using the Gtk.Image widget. In this example we also used the Gtk.IconView widget to display image thumbnails.