Gnome disks needs "unlock" function like Mac OS

This is about gnome-disks for storage management.

A feature Mac OS has is “unlock” for a lot of the system management GUI. This is useful because you enter authentication a single time, and then can use it freely until locked.
This is a problem because gnome-disks prompts for su password at every single change. I have a simple system so that requires 1 disk prompt, 1 LUKS prompt, 1 partition prompt, and more prompts for mounting and unmounting drives when testing it. A 3 disk system requires minimum 9 sudo password prompts for config, and that’s hoping you enter the configs properly.
This problem is solved by running gnome-disks from a sudo command prompt, but that defeats the purpose of a GUI. It needs a lock/unlock feature to be fully usable as a desktop application.

Please specify the OS version / GNOME version.

Normally this should happen through polkit actions / policies.
Refer https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Polkit.

FWIW, opening a partition in gnome-disks (on Debian Unstable) asks for password the first time, and not for the next partitions.

1 Like