> flatpak portals are cool so long as you don't mind manually approving all file access

And by “manually approving all file access” you mean “opening the file in the file picker like normal”, right? There are some apps where using a file picker at all is awkward, but I’d argue in most applications it’s basically what you’d do anyway. Certainly most applications that non-developers would use.

The bigger problem is that lots of Flatpak applications still don’t use portals.