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How to Install DocFila on Linux — Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch & More

By DocFila Team · April 24, 2026 · 5 min read

Linux is a first-class citizen for DocFila. The app installs as a real desktop application on Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Debian, Manjaro, Pop!_OS, openSUSE, and any other distro that runs a Chromium-based browser. You get a .desktop file in your application menu, GNOME / KDE / XFCE integration, file associations, and full offline support — without sudo, without snap, without flatpak. Here's how.

What you'll need

• Any modern Linux distribution (Ubuntu 22.04+, Fedora 38+, Arch, Debian 12+, Pop!_OS, Manjaro, openSUSE, etc.)
• One of: Google Chrome, Chromium, Microsoft Edge, Brave, or Vivaldi. Firefox does not yet support PWA install on Linux.
• No sudo / root required. Installs to your user directory only.

Step-by-step install (any Chromium browser)

1. Open docfila.web.app in Chrome, Chromium, Edge, Brave, or Vivaldi.
2. Look at the right side of the address bar — you'll see an install icon (a small monitor with a down arrow).
3. Click it, then click Install in the popup.
4. DocFila launches in its own window. A .desktop file is created at ~/.local/share/applications/ so the app appears in your distro's application menu (GNOME Activities, KDE Plasma menu, XFCE Whisker, Cinnamon menu).
5. Pin DocFila to your dock or taskbar — drag from the menu, or right-click the running app and choose Add to Favourites / Pin to Dash.

Distro-specific notes

Ubuntu / Pop!_OS / Mint: Use Chromium from the official Snap or apt repository, or install Google Chrome from google.com/chrome. After install, DocFila appears in the GNOME Activities overview.

Fedora: Use Chromium from the rpmfusion repo or install Chrome via the official RPM. Works seamlessly with GNOME and KDE Plasma spins.

Arch / Manjaro: Install chromium or brave-bin from pacman / AUR. The .desktop integration works with KDE Plasma's task manager and GNOME Shell.

Debian: Use the official Chromium package or download Chrome's .deb. The .desktop file integrates with all major desktop environments.

Set DocFila as the default app for PDFs

On GNOME: open Files, right-click any PDF → Properties → Open With → DocFila → Set as default. On KDE Plasma: right-click → Properties → File Type Options → Add → DocFila. From the terminal, you can also run:

xdg-mime default docfila.desktop application/pdf

Now double-clicking any PDF in your file manager opens it directly in DocFila.

Wayland, multi-monitor, and offline

DocFila runs natively on Wayland (default on Fedora, Ubuntu 22.04+) and Xorg. Multi-monitor and HiDPI scaling work out of the box because the host browser handles them. The app caches itself on first launch, so you can keep working on a laptop without Wi-Fi — changes sync the moment you reconnect. See the DocFila Desktop overview for more.

Uninstalling DocFila

From the running app: open the menu → Uninstall DocFila. Or manually delete the .desktop file:

rm ~/.local/share/applications/chrome-*-Default.desktop

(replace the wildcard with the actual DocFila .desktop filename — find it with ls ~/.local/share/applications/ | grep -i docfila.)

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