Do you use KDE and Telegram does not allow you to change the download path? Try this

I do not remember since when this bug is present. I only suffer it in Telegram, when I try to change the download path of the messaging application. If we want to configure an alternative download path and then delete the downloads manually, it simply does not let us "choose", always showing the "open" option that does not work for us. It is a bug in KDE XDG that the project promised to fix months ago, but the bug continues to exist.

I hardly ever (or never) use the Downloads folder. Because of the way I work, I like to have temporary files on my desktop, and once I'm done with them, they go to the trash or to a specific folder, such as Documents, Videos or Music. For that reason I want the Telegram downloads to also go to the desktop, but the failure in XDG prevents us from choosing that folder if we use KDE. In GNOME, for example, it doesn't happen, but it does if we use the K desktop. Luckily there is a solution, a shortcut, which is to enter the path manually.

Change the Telegram download folder with this trick

What you have to do is simple, but you have to know it.

1. First, we will click on the hamburger and then we will go to Settings.
2. Once there, and as we would do if the bug did not exist in XDG, we go to Advanced / Download path.
3. Then we click on "Custom folder, manual delete" and this is where we will do the trick.
4. In the "Name" field, we put the symbols "~ /" (without the quotes) and the Home folders will appear. If, as in my case, we want to change the folder to Desktop, we choose "~ / Desktop" and then we click on "Open". We will see that the path has changed, and when we download anything it will appear on our desktop. If we want to put another route, we have to put the route manually. As pointed out in the comments, another option is to move to the folder we want to choose, add a point in "Name" and we accept.

As they say in these cases, it is not the most elegant, but it works. And in this one in particular, it is not that we have to do anything strange; we will only be doing the manual change, and should work in any application affected by the bug by XDG.