Ubuntu – gsettings – change privacy settings via command line

command linedconfgsettingsprivacy

I know how to change privacy settings via GUI (System Settings > Security & Privacy), but I'd like to be able to do it from command line.

What I did to find out

I ran the command:

dconf watch /

to see what changes were made. About the command (from man dconf):

watch
    Watch a key or directory for changes.

Subsequently, I changed settings via GUI to see what happened in the output of the command. It showed:

/org/gnome/desktop/privacy/remember-recent-files false
/com/canonical/unity/lenses/remote-content-search 'none'
/org/gnome/desktop/screensaver/ubuntu-lock-on-suspend false
/org/gnome/desktop/screensaver/lock-enabled false

My question is: how can I use this information to change the settings from command line?

Best Answer

Different ways to edit those settings

The settings you mention are stored in the dconf database in ~/.config/dconf (in binary format). This database can either be directly edited with dconf, or via gsettings. The difference is explained at the last section of this answer.

Once you have the information, posted in your question, you can therefore change the corresponding settings in two different ways.
Using your first example (setting remember-recent-files):

using dconf write:

dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/privacy/remember-recent-files false

using gsettings set:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.privacy remember-recent-files false

Similarly, reading the current setting:

using dconf read:

dconf read /org/gnome/desktop/privacy/remember-recent-files

using gsettings get:

gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.privacy remember-recent-files

In the first case, you edit the dconf database directly, in the latter you are using gsettings, which is a CLI frontend to dconf.

Which way to prefer; dconf or gsettings?

To protect the integrity of your dconf database, in general, it is considered better practice to use gsettings.

Frome this link, we read:

The dconf program can perform various operations on a dconf database, such as reading or writing individual values or entire directories. This tool operates on dconf directly, without using gsettings schema information. Therefore, it cannot perform type and consistency checks on values. The gsettings(1) utility is an alternative if such checks are needed. You can see gsettings as the cli-frontside to dconf.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to get Summary and Description of Schema using gsettings

It is not possible to do this with gsettings, as the option simply does not exist. There is extensive documentation on gsettings and the internals of the program at the official Gnome site.

However, there is an interesting project at github called gsettings-info that does exactly what you ask. It is a script that queries information about either schemas and/or keys from the gschema information and returns the same data about them that is displayed when you use dconf-editor.

You'll requiere Git and git xsltproc (library that it uses to read the gschema information)

sudo apt install git xsltproc

Obtain the program with:

git clone git://github.com/jmatsuzawa/gsettings-info.git
cd gsettings-info

Now you can run the script

./gsettings-info <command>

You can either run it from the home folder (and occasionally update it by going to the folder and using git pull), or install to the system or place it in your ~/bin folder so it is available by just entering gsettings-info.

If you are running it from the downloaded folder, entering ./gsettings-info help will give all the options, as does the README and the information at the Github page.

You can find much information on both the schemas and keys. Here is an example of how to find data about certain keys. This assumes it is run from the downloaded folder, and so ./ is needed to run the script.

To find out details about the particular keys of the chosen schema, enter:

./gsettings-info desc org.gnome.gnumeric.autocorrect

which returns:

init-caps: Autocorrect initial caps
init-caps-list: Autocorrect initial caps
first-letter: The autocorrect engine does not correct the initial caps for words in this list.
first-letter-list: The autocorrect engine does not correct the first letter for words in this list.
names-of-days: Autocorrect names of days
replace: Autocorrect replace

To show defaults and information for a particular key, use:

./gsettings-info show org.gnome.gnumeric.autocorrect init-caps

which returns:

KEY: init-caps
TYPE: b
SUMMARY: Autocorrect initial caps
DESCRIPTION: Autocorrect initial caps
DEFAULT: true

This seems to be exactly what your are looking for, and is about the only way to show this information on the command-line instead of in dconf-editor.

Ubuntu – Ubuntu 16.04 launcher icon size gsettings command line

That one is really tricky (I had to look at the code of unity-control-center to find it). It is

gsettings set org.compiz.unityshell:/org/compiz/profiles/unity/plugins/unityshell/ icon-size <SIZE>

Hope that helps.