<page xmlns="http://projectmallard.org/1.0/"
      xmlns:its="http://www.w3.org/2005/11/its"
      type="topic" style="task"
      id="gsettings-browse">

  <info>
    <link type="guide" xref="setup" />
    <link type="seealso" xref="dconf" />
    <link type="seealso" xref="overrides" />
    <revision pkgversion="3.30" date="2019-02-08" status="draft"/>

    <credit type="author copyright">
      <name>Matthias Clasen</name>
      <email>[email protected]</email>
      <years>2012</years>
    </credit>
    <credit type="author copyright">
      <name>Jim Campbell</name>
      <email>[email protected]</email>
      <years>2012</years>
    </credit>
    <credit type="editor">
      <name>Petr Kovar</name>
      <email>[email protected]</email>
      <years>2019</years>
    </credit>

    <include href="legal.xml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"/>

    <desc>What tool can I use to explore system and application settings?</desc>
  </info>

  <title>Browse GSettings values for your applications</title>

  <p>There are two tools you can use to browse system and application
  preferences stored as GSettings values, the <app>dconf-editor</app> graphical
  utility and the <cmd>gsettings</cmd> command line utility.</p>

  <p>Both <app>dconf-editor</app> and <cmd>gsettings</cmd> also allows you to
  change preferences for the current user.</p>

  <note style="warning"><p>Note that these tools always operate using the
  current user's GSettings database, so you should not run these
  applications as root.</p>
  
  <p>Both <app>dconf-editor</app> and <cmd>gsettings</cmd> require a
  D-Bus session bus in order to make any changes. This is because the
  <sys>dconf</sys> daemon must be activated using D-Bus.</p>

  <p>You can get the required session bus by running <cmd>gsettings</cmd> under
  the <sys>dbus-launch</sys> utility, like this:</p>

  <screen><output>$ </output><input>dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background draw-background true</input></screen>
  </note>

  <p><app>dconf-editor</app> may be better to use if you are not familiar with
  the options available in an application. It shows the hierarchy of settings
  in a tree-view and also displays additional information about each setting,
  including the description, type and default value.</p>

  <p><cmd>gsettings</cmd> is more powerful than <app>dconf-editor</app>.
  Bash completion is provided for <cmd>gsettings</cmd>, and you can write
  scripts that include <cmd>gsettings</cmd> commands for automated
  configuration.</p>

  <p>For a complete list of <cmd>gsettings</cmd> options, see the
  <link its:translate="no" href="man:gsettings"><cmd>gsettings</cmd>(1)</link>
  man page.</p>

</page>