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/ui/gtkfilechooserwidget.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.