Mastering Seahorse: A Comprehensive Guide to GNOME Keyring Management

GNOME is one of the most important desktop environments that exist today. One of its main advantages is that it has many series tools to cover the most significant number of needs. Today, we will take a look at Seahorse (GNOME Keyring) to explain its functions.

According to GNOME:

Seahorse is a GNOME application for managing encryption keys and passwords in the GNOME Keyring.

Seahorse centralizes the following functions in a single graphical user interface:

• Password management
• Certificate store
• GnuPG keystore
• OpenSSH key store

Therefore, although this is not its main function, Seahorse can also be used as a simple and functional password manager, which will not compete with more sophisticated solutions, but will still meet your needs.

However, these are not the only features it offers, since you can also:

• Add an image in any GDK supported format as an OpenGPG photo ID.
• Create SSH keys, configure them, cache them.
• Synchronize your keys and your keyring with key servers.

Being a tool of the GNOME project, it is open source and packaged for the vast majority of existing Linux distributions. So, the installation is easy to do.

Installing Seahorse (GNOME Keyring) on Linux

Method 1: Install Seahorse using the package manager

Seahorse is present in the official repositories of many Linux distirbutions as it is part of GNOME. So, this method is one of the safest we can find out there.

Debian-based distributions such as Ubuntu and derivatives

In this case, just open a terminal and run

sudo apt install seahorse

Fedora

Fedora also includes Seahorse in its repositories, so it will be enough to run

sudo dnf install seahorse

For openSUSE

In the case of openSUSE, you can run this command

sudo zypper in seahorse

For Arch Linux and Manjaro based distributions

For Arch Linux, it all boils down to

sudo pacman -S seahorse

As you can see, it is present in the official repositories of many distributions.

Method 2: Using Flatpak to get the latest version

Getting Seahorse from the official repositories is probably the easiest and most efficient method. However, you will not always get the latest stable version of Seahorse and you will miss out on many of its new features.

To solve this dilemma, you can use Flatpak. Flatpak is an innovative packaging system that allows the developer to incorporate all the dependencies of your software in a single package, making it more accessible to get the latest stable versions.

Install Flatpak on Linux

Flatpak also comes standard on some distributions such as Linux Mint, Manjaro, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and Fedora Workstation.

In the case of Debian, you can install it by running in the terminal:

sudo apt install flatpak

But in the case of Ubuntu and derivatives, it is convenient to add a PPA to always have the base package updated and install it from there.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:flatpak/stable
sudo apt update
sudo apt install flatpak

Installing Flatpak on Arch Linux or Manjaro is possible by running

sudo pacman -S flatpak

On openSUSE, it would be enough with

sudo zypper in flatpak

Or on Rocky Linux 9 / Alma Linux 9

sudo dnf install flatpak

Adding the Flathub repository to install Seahorse

The next step is to add the Flathub repository to the system, since that is where the Seahorse project is hosted.

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Now all that remains is to run

flatpak install flathub org.gnome.seahorse.Application

Then run it from the main menu or with the command

flatpak run org.gnome.seahorse.Application

Using Seahorse on Linux

As soon as you open the tool, you will have this interface

You will probably be surprised not to see a section dedicated to passwords. This is because there is no repository as such.

So, the first step is to create it from the + button by selecting the Password Keyring option.

You will be asked to enter the name of this new deposit,

And then the password that will protect it.

Now you will see the password section.

As it is empty, it is normal to start adding passwords you use.

Again, click on the + button, but this time choose the Password option.

In the window that will appear, select the Keyring to use (yes, you can create several), a description and the password. Then, press Add.

Now you will see it added to the system.

And so on… with the rest of the passwords. Finally, take a look at the tool preferences.

Uninstall Seahorse from the system

If you no longer want to use it, the normal thing to do is to remove it from the system to save some disk space.

If you installed it using your distribution’s package manager, then this same package manager will be used for uninstallation.

For Debian, Ubuntu and derivatives

sudo apt remove seahorse

Fedora users can run

sudo dnf remove seahorse

For openSUSE run

sudo zypper rm seahorse

Finally, for Arch Linux and derelicts like Manjaro or Parabola

sudo pacman -R seahorse

But if you used Flatpak to install Seahorse, then everything is simpler, since you only have to run

flatpak uninstall org.gnome.seahorse.Application

Then there will be no more traces of Seahorse.

Conclusion

Seahorse is an important GNOME member in managing not only passwords, but also the system keyring. In this post, I helped you to install it, but also to take the first steps with it.