The catalog in this directory defines some widgets that are private to GTK+ and is needed to edit .ui files defining composite classes in GTK+. In order to edit any composite classes in GTK+, startup Glade in the following way, example: cd /path/to/gtk+/ GLADE_CATALOG_SEARCH_PATH=`pwd`/gtk/glade glade gtk/gtkfilechooserdefault.ui Documentation for updating this catalog can be found here: https://developer.gnome.org/gladeui/stable/ Note also that when including private GTK+ widgets as components, it is important to call g_type_ensure () to register the type explicitly before calling gtk_container_init_template(), otherwise GtkBuilder will not be able to properly load the type.