Watch Folders empty after restart (Flatpak)

[olivia-fox]

Description

After restarting my computer, ente "looses" my watched folders. I'm not sure if this is expected or something weird with the flatpak version (which I think uses portals)?

If I re-add the folders, they will correctly sync, and they remain when ente is re-opened within one session (between rebooting my computer).

I couldn't find any errors in the ente.log, just expected entries for watch folder picking up on file changes and skipping existing files correctly.

Version

v1.7.16 (Flatpak)

What product are you using?

Ente Photos

What platform are you using?

Desktop - Linux (Fedora Kinoite / KDE)

[anandbaburajan]

@olivia-fox hey, are you using an external drive?

[olivia-fox]

I'm not using an external drive, but the OS I'm on symlinks the home directory from it's mountpoint at /var/home to /home. That might be the cause? 🤔

ente's log doesn't show any errors:

[2026-01-02T19:57:12-08:00] [main] [info] Starting ente-photos-desktop 1.7.16
...
[2026-01-02T19:57:19-08:00] [rndr] [info] Folder watch deduced 0 events