If you've settled on Gnome then you don't have to change anything. Gnome will change it for you. Regardless of you. I really miss Gtk3/4 File->open dialogs having the ability to take pasted filepaths without erroring out.

But I will hand it to Gnome: they're the only wayland protocol desktop that supports accessibilty. That's huge. So even if I hate how it behaves right now while mostly sighted Gnome DE may be the only option for me in the future. And I guess I won't have to look at it when my retinas finish falling off.