How to make appcenter installing flatpak powered software system-wide by default?

[sauntor]

as the title of this Q&A, is it possible? the reason why try to do this, is that, some common apps like Only Office , VLC, etc., may be installed several times for each user, it waste hard disk space...

[lenemter]

You need to install flathub repository system-wide:

sudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists --system flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

After that you can select system-wide install on the app page.

[sauntor]

Thanks! But what will happen if I just disable the filter of the predefined remote freedesktop rather than adding a new system scoped flathub?

[lenemter]

I don't really know, but number of apps in freedesktop remote is exactly the same as in flathub. Guess you can just disable the filter.

lenemter@elementary-7:~$ flatpak remote-ls flathub --user | wc -l
3893
lenemter@elementary-7:~$ flatpak remote-ls freedesktop | wc -l
3893

[sauntor]

As this command shows:

flatpak remotes --columns=name,url
Name        URL
appcenter   https://flatpak.elementary.io/repo
freedesktop https://dl.flathub.org/repo/

The system remote freedesktop is exactly the flathub with some apps filtered out.

I disabled its filter already, and it seems no strange things will happen.