Ubuntu’s new desktop Security Center app is gearing up for its first stable release, along with a background tool called Prompting Client.
I first reported on the creation of Security Center earlier this year and it hasn’t changed a great deal since then. Underlying code has been improved, and the Flutter UI made to look more like Yaru/GTK, but in terms of what it does, not much!
The Snap Store description for the app describes it as “Security Center UI for the desktop”, which doesn’t say a great deal about the purpose or why a user might want to install it.
In short, the Security Center is a graphical front-end through which to manage snap app permissions, and little else. These permissions are said to differ to the controls users already manage using the Settings > Applications panel.
Earlier builds from April did include Ubuntu Pro integration, but that’s no longer present in the ‘stable’ or ‘edge’ channel versions, presumably as Security Center wasn’t ready for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and Ubuntu Pro is only available on LTS releases.
The app does now have toggle (labelled experimental) which appears to force all snap apps to ask for permission when they try to access things beyond their sandbox. I wonder if this feature makes use of the new Prompting Client tool that Canonical is also developing.
Prompting Client is a GUI AppArmor permissions handler that ‘prompts’ users with GUI permissions dialogs when an app needs to do something beyond the confines of its designated security policy (as set by AppArmor).
You can see Prompting Client in action (a WIP build from a few weeks ago) in the following GIF. In it, an Ubuntu developer saves an image from a web page in Firefox. Two permission requests appear to control those read and write permissions: –
You install Security Center from the Snap Store already, if you’re impatient.
Prompting Client is also on the Snap Store (no listing page as it’s a background app, but sudo snap install prompting-client will install it if the relevant flags are enabled in the snapd configuration file – but don’t do that idly, please).
Anyway, a short update on this potentially useful tool for users of snap apps looking to weird greater control over which parts of the system they can (and can’t) access. Canonical will apparently be posting a blog post about the app soon, so look out for that.