Everything wants access to the "default keyring"

Message

ExecutorElassus · Post by **ExecutorElassus** » Sat Mar 07, 2026 10:36 am

So, for a while now when trying to start the Brave browser, I get at least two prompts from "gcr-prompter" saying "an application wants access to the default keyring, but it is locked" and asking for a password. Now, it's also Opera, and the most recent version of JabRef (which also won't open the Preferences window and will freeze up if I try to escape out from that prompt).

To my knowledge, I've never used a "default keyring", and none of my usual passwords seem to work in the prompt. How do I stop this window from popping up and blocking all my applications? app-crypt/gcr seems like a hard dependency of gnome-base (among others), so what options are available to make this go away?

Cheers,

Post by **Banana** » Sat Mar 07, 2026 4:47 pm

This should be gnome keyring.

System ⇒ Preferences ⇒ Startup Applications and uncheck gnome-keyring-daemon.

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8874385.html
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8705732.html

ExecutorElassus · Post by **ExecutorElassus** » Sat Mar 07, 2026 5:02 pm

I probably should have mentioned I'm using FVWM as my WM, not gnome or KDE. I don't have it set to start automatically in the config file; it seems the browsers and JabRef are configured to use it for password storage.

However, I *never* use gnome-keyring to store any online passwords. I guess I'll have to follow the solution in the posts you linked, and set USE="-gnome-keyring" globally, though that won't help me with JabRef.

Cheers,

Post by **Banana** » Sun Mar 08, 2026 9:05 am

I do not use brave, so this are only suggestions:

Launching ith with: brave-browser --password-store=basic, can maybe of help.
Also some google foo does tell something about a setting the brave itself. Should be in Password Manager or something like that.