Ubuntu’s keyring is a feature that collects all of your passwords in a secure application (gnome-keyring) and will use these stored passwords to automatically log you in to various services. All of your stored passwords inside of the keyring are protected by a single master password. The keyring gets “unlocked” when you first provide your system password at sign in.
Users that have enabled automatic log in for their system may have noticed a persistent and annoying popup message that says The login keyring did not get unlocked when you logged into your computer. This is just the gnome-keyring application asking for your password so that it can be used to authenticate with various services and applications on your system.
The problem is that having an automatic login does not do you much good if you still need to provide your password every reboot for some other application. In this tutorial, you will see how to deactivate the keyring pop up on an Ubuntu Linux system.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to disable keyring popup message on Ubuntu
| Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
|---|---|
| System | Ubuntu Linux |
| Software | gnome-keyring |
| Other | Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command. |
| Conventions |
# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
How to disable keyring popup on Ubuntu step by step instructions
You have two options to fix the keyring message from appearing all the time. The first option is you could just disable automatic login. This means you will need to provide your user’s password every time the system boots up, but you will no longer see the keyring popup message.
The second option is to set an empty master password for your keyring. This is a glaring security hole, as now anyone would be able to access all of your stored passwords without needing to first provide a master password. However, if you already have enabled automatic login to your system anyway, there is a chance that you are not majorly concerned with security in the first place.
Our step by step instructions below will cover how to set a blank password on the keyring, thereby disabling the popup message permanently.
- Open up the
Activitesmenu and search forkeyring. Open thePasswords and Keysapplication that shows up in the search results.
Search for and open the GNOME keyring app - In the keyring application, right click on the
Loginto the left, and click onChange Password.
Select to change password on the keyring
- Authenticate with the keyring by using your current password.
Log in to the keyring - Leave the password fields blank and simply click
Continue.Leave the password fields blank - Ubuntu will warn you that it will now be storing your passwords in an unencrypted format. This is your chance to consider if the security risk is worth the convenience. If it is, then click
Continueonce more.
Decide if you really want to store your passwords unencrypted
That’s all there is to it. You can close the keyring application after you have made your changes, and the keyring pop up message should not show up again in the future.
Keep in mind that you will need to perform these same steps for all users on the system that wish to disable the keyring pop up message.
Closing Thoughts
In this tutorial, you saw how to disable the keyring popup message on an Ubuntu Linux system. Some users consider this message to be annoying, but it is just a security feature meant to store your passwords for the added convenience of automatic login to certain applications. If the security risk does not bother you, then setting a blank password will get rid of the pop up and allow you to continue logging into Ubuntu automatically.