I normally move /home/user/Downloads off /home/user to a secondary mechanical drive and then symlink it back to /home/user. Firejail for security reasons does not allow whitelisting directories residing outside of the home directory, the simplest solution I found is mount Download directory using mount --bind. sudo mount --bind /mnt/data/Downloads/ /home/user/Downloads To make the change permanent edit fstab: cat /etc/fstab --- /mnt/data/Downloads /home/user/Downloads none bind