Disabling the Screensaver Lock Screen Setting

Introduction

This article provides a step-by-step guide to manually disable the screensaver lock screen setting on the GNOME desktop environment. Follow the instructions below to complete the process using dconf and dconf-editor.

Problem

Users may need to disable the screensaver lock screen setting on their GNOME desktop environment for various reasons, such as preventing interruption during tasks.

Prerequisites

Make sure your system includes the dconf and dconf-editor packages. If you need to install them, run the following command:

sudo dnf install -y dconf dconf-editor

Instructions

Steps to disable the screensaver lock-screen setting

1. Launch dconf-editor

   Open the dconf-editor by running the following command in your terminal:

   dconf-editor
   

   This action launches the dconf GUI.

2. Navigate to the screensaver settings

   In the dconf-editor, navigate to the screensaver settings by following this path:

   org > gnome > desktop > screensaver
   

3. Edit lock screen setting

   • Click on lock-enabled. This opens a screen where you can change the value.
   • Toggle the Use default value to off.
   • Change the Custom value to false.
   • Click the blue check-mark at the bottom to confirm your changes.

   

4. Handling errors

   If you encounter the following error in your terminal while attempting to save the settings:

   (dconf-editor:17050): dconf-WARNING **: [time]: failed to commit changes to dconf: Failed to execute child process "dbus-launch" (No such file or directory)
   

   This indicates that the dbus-launch utility is missing. Resolve this by exiting the GUI and installing the dbus-x11 package:

   sudo dnf install -y dbus-x11
   

   After installing, relaunch the GUI and attempt to save your changes again. If the error persists, reboot the system.

Validate the changes

Verify that the lock screen is disabled by running one of the following commands:

gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-enabled

or

dconf read /org/gnome/desktop/screensaver/lock-enabled

These commands should return false, indicating that the lock screen has been disabled.

Conclusion

Follow these steps to manually disable the screensaver lock screen setting on your GNOME desktop environment. If you encounter any issues, verify that you have installed and correctly configured all required packages.