NixOS: Managing GNOME Keyboard Shortcuts and Settings with Home Manager
EDIT: June 21, 2023: thanks to u/jtojnar for pointing out the issue on this post with using "@as []" for disabled dconf settings. Shortly after posting this in January, I figured out that "disabled" was one of the ways to disable a setting with GNOME – but I forgot to update this post! I have updated the config shown on this post. Here’s the Reddit post referring to this article: https://reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/14fenpb/issue_with_declarative_gnome_keyboard_shortcuts/
EDIT: As of June 21, 2023, for reference, here is my GNOME desktop Home-Manager configuration: gnome-desktop.nix
This will be a quick snippet on how I’m using Home Manager in my NixOS configuration to manage GNOME keyboard shortcuts and other various settings.
Use Home Manager as a NixOS config module:
This config basically explains how I’m importing Home Manager (version 22.11) in my /etc/nixos/configuration.nix:
{ config, pkgs, ... }:
let
home-manager = builtins.fetchTarball "https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/release-22.11.tar.gz";
in {
imports = [ <home-manager/nixos> ];
...
Using Home Manager to manage GNOME:
With Home Manager imported, I can now use it’s home-manager.users.<username>.dconf.settings option. I’ll just dump my current home-manager.users.heywoodlh configuration to show what I currently have set as an example (I feel like it’s pretty self-explanatory):
home-manager.users.heywoodlh = {
home.stateVersion = "22.11";
dconf.settings = {
"org/gnome/shell" = {
disable-user-extensions = false;
disabled-extensions = "disabled";
enabled-extensions = [
"native-window-placement@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com"
"pop-shell@system76.com"
"caffeine@patapon.info"
"hidetopbar@mathieu.bidon.ca"
"gsconnect@andyholmes.github.io"
];
favorite-apps = ["firefox.desktop" "kitty.desktop"];
had-bluetooth-devices-setup = true;
remember-mount-password = false;
welcome-dialog-last-shown-version = "42.4";
};
"org/gnome/shell/extensions/hidetopbar" = {
enable-active-window = false;
enable-intellihide = false;
};
"org/gnome/desktop/interface" = {
clock-show-seconds = true;
clock-show-weekday = true;
color-scheme = "prefer-dark";
enable-hot-corners = false;
font-antialiasing = "grayscale";
font-hinting = "slight";
gtk-theme = "Nordic";
toolkit-accessibility = true;
};
"org/gnome/desktop/wm/keybindings" = {
activate-window-menu = "disabled";
toggle-message-tray = "disabled";
close = ["<Super>q"];
maximize = "disabled";
minimize = ["<Super>comma"];
move-to-monitor-down = "disabled";
move-to-monitor-left = "disabled";
move-to-monitor-right = "disabled";
move-to-monitor-up = "disabled";
move-to-workspace-down = "disabled";
move-to-workspace-up = "disabled";
toggle-maximized = ["<Super>m"]';
unmaximize = "disabled";
};
"org/gnome/desktop/wm/preferences" = {
button-layout = "close,minimize,maximize:appmenu";
num-workspaces = 10;
};
"org/gnome/shell/extensions/pop-shell" = {
focus-right = "disabled";
tile-by-default = true;
tile-enter = "disabled";
};
"org/gnome/desktop/peripherals/touchpad" = {
tap-to-click = true;
two-finger-scrolling-enabled = true;
};
"org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys" = {
next = [ "<Shift><Control>n" ];
previous = [ "<Shift><Control>p" ];
play = [ "<Shift><Control>space" ];
custom-keybindings = [
"/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom0/"
"/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom1/"
"/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom2/"
"/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom3/"
];
};
"org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom0" = {
name = "kitty super";
command = "kitty -e tmux";
binding = "<Super>Return";
};
"org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom1" = {
name = "kitty ctrl_alt";
command = "kitty -e tmux";
binding = "<Ctrl><Alt>t";
};
"org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom2" = {
name = "rofi-rbw";
command = "rofi-rbw --action copy";
binding = "<Ctrl><Super>s";
};
"org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom3" = {
name = "rofi launcher";
command = "rofi -theme nord -show run -display-run 'run: '";
binding = "<Super>space";
};
};
};
Using Home Manager this way allows me to have an easy, declarative GNOME setup.
Tips for modifying dconf settings:
If you install dconf-editor you can see what options are available when you run the dconf-editor application.
One of the things that I do when I want to make a setting persist in my config, is I run the following command:
dconf dump / > old-conf.txt
Then I make a change in my GNOME settings and run dconf dump again:
dconf dump / > new-conf.txt
You can now run diff old-conf.txt new-conf.txt to figure out what options in your GNOME settings changed and then codify it in your configuration.nix with the home-manager.users.<username>.dconf.settings attribute.