App Permissions
When an app asks to take screenshots, use the camera or microphone, or see your location, the desktop remembers your answer. App Permissions lists those answers by app so you can change one or make the app ask again.
What it shows#
Voltkit reads the permission store of the desktop portal (xdg-desktop-portal). An app appears here after it has asked for something. It is a history of your answers, not a list of everything an app is technically able to do: apps outside a sandbox can have capabilities that never go through the portal.
Each application is a row you expand to see its remembered permissions. The kinds of permission include:
- Take screenshots
- Use the camera
- Use the microphone
- Play sound
- See your location (the answer can be Allowed: exact location or Allowed: approximate location)
- Run in the background
- Show notifications
- Keep the computer awake
- Control your computer remotely
- Record or share your screen
- Change the wallpaper
- Run with real-time priority
- Look at the windows on screen
- Use desktop services
Use it#
- Open App Permissions. The list loads when the page opens; click Refresh to read it again.
- Use Find an app or permission… to narrow the list. Search by an app name or a permission such as camera. No apps match this search means nothing fits.
- Expand an app to see its answers.
- Change an answer with the switch next to it: Allowed or Denied.
- Forget, so the app asks again removes the saved answer. The next time the app needs that permission, the desktop asks you again, and a toast confirms: {app} will ask again. Clicked the wrong one? Click Undo on that toast to put the answer back exactly as it was, including a Remembered answer such as a location accuracy.
Answers that are more than a plain yes or no (a location accuracy, a saved screen-sharing choice) are marked Remembered. They can only be forgotten, not switched.
Apps the desktop could not identify are grouped under Apps without an ID.
Empty page#
No app has asked for anything yet means the store is empty. Answers appear after an app asks, for example to take a screenshot.
Notes#
- Changes are made in the portal's permission store and apply the next time the app asks. A running app may keep what it already received until it restarts.
- This page does not read or change Flatpak overrides; it works with the answers the desktop portal stored.
- Nothing is sent anywhere. The page only talks to the portal on your computer.
Troubleshooting#
- The list is empty or shows an error. It needs the session's D-Bus and the permission store of the desktop portal. Could not read permissions shows the reason.
- I changed an answer and the app still has access. Restart the app.