Disable file saving

You can disable the Save and Save As dialogs. This can be useful if you are giving temporary access to a user or you do not want the user to save files to the computer.

This feature will only work in applications which support it! Not all GNOME and third party applications have this feature enabled. These changes will have no effect on applications which do not support this feature.

Disable file saving

  1. Create the user profile which contains the following lines:

    /etc/dconf/profile/user

    user-db:user
    system-db:local

    local is the name of a dconf database.

  2. Create the directory /etc/dconf/db/local.d/ if it does not already exist.

  3. Create the key file /etc/dconf/db/local.d/00-filesaving to provide information for the local database.

    /etc/dconf/db/local.d/00-filesaving

    # Specify the dconf path
    [org/gnome/desktop/lockdown]
    
    # Prevent the user from saving files on disk
    disable-save-to-disk=true
  4. To prevent the user from overriding these settings, create the file /etc/dconf/db/local.d/locks/filesaving with the following content:

    /etc/dconf/db/local.db/locks/filesaving

    # Lock file saving settings
    /org/gnome/desktop/lockdown/disable-save-to-disk
  5. Update the system databases:

    # dconf update
  6. Users must log out and back in again before the system-wide settings take effect.