The issue went away when I removed gnome-user-share (sudo apt-get --purge remove gnome-user-share). Apparently it was caused by Gnome’s file sharing function referring to $XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR and recreating the (default-named) directory when not found. With gnome-user-share removed, the ”Public” directory no longer reappears.

I’ve set ”enabled=False” in my /etc/xdg/user-dirs.conf which, according to comments in that file, and also according to the spec, should stop xdg-user-dirs-update from running at login time and thus also from recreating any missing $XDG_*_DIR directories.

Additionally, I’ve commented out the definition of XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR in my user’s ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs due to not being able to decide where to point it at for now.

Despite xdg-user-dirs-update being disabled, a directory named ”Public” reappears in my user’s home directory at every login. What is causing this and how can I stop the unwanted Public directory from appearing? I’ve found an old Red Hat bug referencing a similar issue, but it’s closed without a known fix.

The issue doesn’t occur for $XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR which I’ve similarly commented out.