Skip to main content What is gnome keyring? : r/gnome

What is gnome keyring?

I have been using keepass for donkeys years. Since switching to Fedora/GNOME recently, I began wondering if using the gnome-keyring is a better alternative.

I don't really understand the pros and cons, though.

I installed Seahorse, which I presume is the GUI for gnome-keyring.

I guess my questions are:

  • can it generate TOTP?

  • can I access passwords from the command line?

  • how do I backup the passwords?

  • are there any security issues with it? I heard that any app can access any password stored in the keyring

IOW, I'm a little confused as to how it all works, and would like a nice overview.


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The GNOME keyring isn't really something users use. It's something software might choose to use.

If software wants to store a password or a credential, it can store it in the keyring. That way it can come under the policy of that keyring — e.g. only made available when the user authenticates themselves. That's pretty much it.

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Basically it's a program that stores passwords for other programs, for example Discord and Firefox. It's more of a internal system thing, you can't access those.

Keepass is a personal password manager so you can manage them on your own.

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Keyring isn't a program designed for the user to use. It's basically just a way for applications to store secrets securely. If you were looking for a new password manager, I'd highly recommend Bitwarden though.

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Ah, I see. I found an app called Secrets, which is for gnome and seems pretty good. That seems to do what I want it to do. The database format is compatible with keepass, which is great.

Secrets is a better-looking app than keepass, although keepass's interface is more logical, IMO.

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I wish I had the knowledge and time to add passkey support to it.

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