Tips

Changing Librem Key language settings

The Librem Key currently defaults to German as its on-board GPG language setting. This means when you plug it in, you might get a desktop prompt in German instead of English. To change the default language used by the Librem Key for GPG, first enter the GPG card edit menu:

gpg --card-edit

Then from the gpg/card> prompt type admin to enter admin mode and then lang to change the language. For instance to change it from German to English, set it to en when you see the Language preferences: prompt:

admin
lang

Then type quit to exit the menu when you are done:

quit

Automatically lock the desktop when removing the Librem Key

Through the use of a simple script and udev rules, you can have your computer lock the screen when you pull out your Librem Key. This integration requires the following files:

  1. /etc/udev/rules.d/85-libremkey.rules

  2. /usr/local/bin/gnome-screensaver-lock

ACTION=="remove", ENV{PRODUCT}=="316d/4c4b/101" RUN+="/usr/local/bin/gnome-screensaver-lock"

85-libremkey.rules

#!/bin/sh

user=`ps aux | egrep "gdm-(wayland|x)-session" | head -n 1 | awk '{print $1}'`

if [ -n $user ]; then
        su $user -c "/usr/bin/dbus-send --type=method_call --dest=org.gnome.ScreenSaver /org/gnome/ScreenSaver org.gnome.ScreenSaver.Lock"
fi

gnome-screensaver-lock

You will need to trigger udev to reload upon installation so it picks up the new rule. You can do that this way:

systemctl restart udev

Using the Librem Key with Heads

TODO: This section will be incomplete until we finalize the initial Heads UI. In the meantime, this blog post describes how the Librem Key integrates with Heads.