Yea all the ‘Exit to desktop’ option seems to do is bypass the confirm exit stage, and then follow normal exit procedure including using any ‘exit command’.
I run the FE Shelled, so if I want to exit to the desktop, I now just replace ‘shutdown’ with ‘explorer’ as the exit command, and then reverse it when I want to power off the arcade from the frontend.
Not ideal but best I can do without adding a script.